Therapy Sessions
by Lattelady
Summary: Jacob and Rachel as they work their way through the aftermath of Medea. Over time Hood faces some truths he managed to hide from himself and Rachel fights her way back, physically and emotionally. Feelings grow and are recognized.
1. Denial

**Disclaimer: **_Eleventh Hour_ characters belong to whoever owns them at the moment. This story was written for fun not profit. Though if it helps to create more interest in this wonderful series, I would be willing to take a bit of credit for that.

**Rating: **PG-13

**Credits 1: **The quotes at the beginning and end of the story and at the beginning of each chapter are taken from _The Divine Comedy Of Dante Alighieri – Inferno, _translation by Allen Mandelbaum. Some of the quotes are taken out of context, but the words are so beautiful I hope no one is offended.

**Disclaimer 2: **I own a copy of _The Divine Comedy_, but not the words or translation.

**Credit 2: **Each chapter is named for one of the five stages of grief: denial, anger, bargaining, and acceptance. I used the book _On Grief and Grieving_ by David Kessler as a reference.

**Beta: **Very special thanks to Obsidian Jade for suggestions and a great deal of hand holding, when I had doubts.

* * *

_When I had journeyed half of our life's way, I found myself within a shadowed forest, for I had lost the path that does not stray. Ah, it is hard to speak of what it was, the savage forest, dense and difficult, which even in recall renews my fear: so bitter—death is hardly more severe! But to tell the good discovered there, I'll also tell the other things I saw. - _ From The Divine Comedy Of Dante Alighieri – Inferno – Canto I

**Therapy Sessions**

_**By Lattelady**_

**Ch 1 – Denial**

* * *

_The day was now departing; the dark air released the living beings of the earth from work and weariness; and I myself alone prepared to undergo the battle both of the journeying and of the pity, which memory, mistaking not, shall show._ -From The Divine Comedy Of Dante Alighieri – Inferno – Canto II

* * *

**April 4, 2009 – 5:30 PM (CDT)**

Dr. Jacob Hood felt as if his life had been flipped upside down. He pressed his right palm against the cool pane of glass separating him from the trauma room where the hospital staff was working on Rachel. Exhausted and fighting crashing adrenaline his forehead dropped to his raised wrist, though raw edges of temper kept his left hand tightly clenched at his side. Moments earlier, the ER doctor had taken the semiconscious woman from his arms and refused to let him follow, leaving him a helpless bystander.

Hood hated being helpless, and he had never played bystander with any semblance of grace. He grunted silently, knowing it was those vary character traits that had gotten him into numerous arguments with his various FBI handlers, not least of all one Rachel Young.

"Sir," a slim silver-haired nurse in navy scrubs tried to get his attention, as she adjusted her reading glasses. "I need to know what happened and any medical history you can give us."

"Hummm?" His didn't even glance at the woman. His focus was on the other side of the window and what was taking place there.

"Sir, any help you can provide would be _appreciated_," Karen Stevens emphasized her words by resting her hand lightly against his forearm. She'd been a trauma nurse for over twenty years and understood when and where to use subtle contact to facilitate communication. "We need information."

"Sure…yeah…Rachel Young, FBI, 29 years old. She…ah…ah…was shot with a bolt from a hunting crossbow…a little less than…" He caught his breath as he looked at his watch. "Oh God, has it really only been 22 hours?" Jacob felt as if he'd lived a lifetime in less than a day. "I…ah…it took me that long to get her back."

"But you did get her back and she's here now, getting the care she needs." Stevens reassured Hood. "Do you know her blood type? Does she have any allergies, or been ill recently…?"

"She's…ah…B positive with no antibodies…no history of prior transfusions. She's allergic to penicillin…gets a rash…but can take cephalosporins…was on Keflex last fall…no adverse reaction. She never gets sick…." Hood rattled off what readily came to mind, but knew there was more. "Ahhh…Wait, I've got…this." He dug into his pocket for his wallet, where he kept a copy of her medical emergency card. She'd given it to him months ago, but he'd never thought he'd have to use it. "That should tell you everything." He handed it to the nurse and returned his attention to the pale blonde on the gurney in the next room.

"Thanks," Stevens took one look at the verifying information and reached for the phone on the wall. As she dialed, she talked to the worried man beside her, "I'll get this back to you as soon as…." Then her attention was on her call, "It's Karen from the ED. We need four units of packed cells, B pos. down here now, and set up four more to be on-call for OR 6. The type and cross will be on its way as soon as they get a line in. Thanks, Mary." She hung up and turned back to the brooding man.

"Sir, Mr…ah…" Karen pretended to consult the medical card as if checking a name, "Mr. Young." This wasn't her first time caring for a government agent. Before retiring, to rural Maryland, she'd spent her career at George Washington University Hospital. She knew from experience the means they would go to stay close to a wounded partner. "Is there any chance your…ah…_wife _is pregnant?"

"Pardon?" Jacob finally focused on the nurse. He'd heard the question and understood why he was being asked: Rachel was of childbearing age and about to undergo surgery. It was the way he'd been asked that confused him.

"Is there any chance…?" She nodded, needing him to pick up on the help she was trying to give him. The moment he admitted he wasn't family, she would have to ask him to leave the patient care area. He didn't look like he'd go easily or quietly and she doubted the small hospital's security was a match for a trained agent. Those men and women could give GW's team a run for their money.

"I heard you…but she's not…we're not," his words ground to a halt as he remembered his other significant experiences with hospitals. A spouse had visiting rights and access to information that friends didn't. He'd never have lied outright to the staff but if they chose to believe….well, he would take advantage of it.

"She's not pregnant." Hood's response skillfully evaded the issue of his relationship to Rachel. It took him a moment to realize why he could answer with such certainty. It wasn't simply that their caseload had been too heavy in the last three months to allow for anything but work. It was that subconsciously he'd recognized a familiar pattern in her life, taken note and filed it away until needed.

He remembered the last night they'd spent in Denver, when he'd joined her in her room for dinner, after finishing his packing. He'd found her asleep on the couch wrapped in a blanket with a pillow tucked between her abdomen and drawn-up knees. The papers she'd been working on were scattered around her. There had been a tin of Motrin sitting on the end table within easy reach, along with a bottle of water, her weapon, pager and cell phone. Everything else was packed for their early morning flight.

That had been eight days ago and he doubted the incident would have pinged his subliminal radar, if he hadn't been married for over five years.

He and Rachel weren't intimate, but when traveling on cases, they lived in casual intimacy. Since the PCP incident, she insisted on adjacent rooms and they had gotten in the habit of keeping the separating doors open. He had a sneaking suspicion they knew a lot more about each other's personal lives than either would admit.

* * *

Rachel was cold. It was a deep penetrating cold that came from the inside out. She heard voices close by, but couldn't understand what was being said. Sounds swept around her, crescendoed and then crashed into nothingness.

…Was that noisy party still going on?

She hurt too much to make sense of what was happening. Her leg was on fire. There was something tight around her left forearm and it felt as if someone was sticking pins into her trapped hand. Was she still cuffed to the bed? She didn't think so…but…but. She forced her eyes open. The bright glare from above made her blink. It had been that way before, bright sunlight shining in a window over Hood's shoulder, deep cold shadows all around them. Sofia Lyons standing over them, out of control and pointing a weapon at Hood. Rachel had been too weak to move, to get between him and the bullet…

"Hood," she cried out and ripped her hand free of whoever had been holding it in place but she couldn't free herself from whatever was wrapped tightly around her forearm. "Hood!" she needed to know he was safe.

"Right here, Rachel. I'm right here." He pushed between the doctors and nurses that had banned him from the room.

"If you can keep her still, while I start this IV, you can come in, otherwise, get the hell out of here." A man to her left looked him in the eyes while he captured the agent's flaying arm, and repositioned a blue rubber tourniquet that was now flecked with blood. "She needs antibiotics and blood, sooner, not later," he growled as he applied pressure to the bleeding site, where an angiocath had recently been. At least he'd gotten his specimen for the blood bank and an Aid had taken it on its way.

"Let me go," Rachel gasped and twisted her wrist. She was frantic to be free. She had a job to do…she needed...needed... "Let me go," her voice trailed off as she fought black weakness that tried to engulf her.

"Stop it, Rachel." Jacob's voice rang out over the chaos. "You're safe. We're at the hospital." He wanted to shout back at the frustrated nurse. Tell him that if he'd been allowed in the room in the first place, she wouldn't have started fighting them. But he saved his energy for what was really important: taking care of Rachel.

"Where…" when she spoke, the hoarse word was hardly louder than a breath, but he heard her.

"I'm here. Let us take care of you." Jacob leaned across her and nodded at the seated man who was attempting to replace the IV she'd pulled out moments earlier. Hood's right hand was on her left bicep to keep her arm in place as the male nurse worked, while his free hand drifted through her hair. She was warm to the touch with splashes of pink high on pasty-colored cheeks. She'd been feverish in the truck, but this was much worse.

"You're not hurt, you're safe?" she asked. Her frightened eyes found his inches away, when he leaned closer to talk to her. Busy noise swirled above their heads, cutting them off from everything that was going on around them.

"I wasn't the one in danger." He spoke quietly. Out of the corner of his eye he saw the nurse slide a new IV into Rachel's hand and tape it securely in place, just as a cooler arrived from the blood bank.

"Sofia…the weapon…" She was confused and agitated.

"Not our worry, anymore," he explained gently.

"But…" Rachel's chin tilted to the side as a fuzzy memory gnawed at the back of her mind. "Did you drive?"

"Yes," he grinned at her, "And we both survived the experience."

"Oh, okay…" She squinted as her head spun. She hadn't seen the doctor inject pain medication into her IV, but Hood had.

"They'll be taking you to surgery in a few minutes." He reassured.

"Jacob," she tried to form words, but wasn't sure they were anywhere but in her head, as her eyes grew heavy. Whatever was making her so dizzy, helped tame the fire in her leg, but leached away at her ability to form cognizant thoughts.

"I'm right here."

"Make…the call…please, this time make the call for back-up." Her fingers twisted weakly in his shirt, pulling him closer in a last attempt to communicate.

"No need, Felix is on his way." …Along with a thundering herd of agents, all out for my head on a platter, but he didn't add the last. "Now rest, I'll be there when you wake up."

"Promise?" she wasn't sure she'd said it out loud, until she saw him nod. Only then did she stop fighting the slowly creeping blackness and sink into exhausted oblivion. She didn't hear Hood groan as her body went lax under his hands, or feel his forehead rest against hers as her eyes closed.

"Rachel," he whispered. Reality and memory echoed around him. For one moment he was sitting beside Maggie's bed, as the light fled from her deep brown eyes. Superimposed on that were images of his attempts to keep Rachel awake since Sofia had dumped her on the bench seat at the old diner. "Rachel?"

"We're taking her up to the OR, Sir, please stand back." Once again Hood was pushed aside by the emergency personnel. He had to watch helplessly as she was stripped of her valuables and strapped to the gurney. "Have a seat in the waiting area, we'll contact you when there is news."

"Can't I…" He attempted to follow the small procession into the hall that led to an elevator.

"Oh, no you don't." Nurse Stevens blocked his way.

"Just until the elevator arrives…" Even as he said the words, he saw someone put a key in the lock where there should have been up and down buttons, automatically summoning a car.

"No." The short silver-haired woman spoke with authority. "Let them do their jobs."

"I won't be any trouble, I promise…." But it was too late, the doors opened and the knot of people surrounding Rachel's gurney surged in. Moments later a deep low moan escaped Hood's lips, as he was left staring at an empty corridor and closed elevator doors. Where there had been hectic noise, there was nothing but silence.

"Sit here." Karen led him to a rolling-stool beside the sink; careful to keep his back to the mess that had been left behind, when they'd taken his partner to the OR. "Is that her blood or yours?" She examined his hands and suddenly pale complexion.

"What?" he mumbled and frowned, just now aware that Rachel had bled on his coat, hands and fingers. "Hers…hers…I didn't realize…I was trying to stop the bleeding." With an angry growl, he shrugged out of the jacket and tossed it toward a large red biohazard container in the corner. "I'd forgotten…" It was the best he could offer as he fought to push back the emotions of the day. There would be time later, once he'd dealt with Ray Wynne and…and… "Oh, God…"

"Easy, honey." She patted the man's shoulder trying to give reassurance. Dealing with distraught family members was part of her job. In her experience federal agents did a better job of hiding what they were feeling. She was beginning to believe there was a lot more between these two than a simple working relationship. "You gotta take care of yourself. She's gonna need you when she wakes up from surgery."

"If she wakes up, you mean." His eyes were filled with devastating loss. He'd never imagined this could happen. Rachel was so full of life. She radiated strength and vitality. Now the source of that strength was soaked into his coat and showed red on his skin. Intellectually he'd understood the ramifications of having a handler who was also a bodyguard, but, up until now, he'd been able to hide it from his emotions.

Oh, yeah, there was a lot more going on here, Karen realized as she watched the man fight for control.

"Dr. Hood, Agent Young?" A breathless male voice accompanied by running footsteps echoed through the hall, leading from the waiting room.

"Felix," Hood answered. "Back here, Felix." Jacob stood and quickly rolled up his sleeves to wash his hands.

Karen blinked at the commanding change in him. He might look like a disheveled nerd, but there was iron strength in him that he hid well.

"Oh my God," a tall black giant of a man appeared in the door. He clutched a laptop at his side. "What the hell---"

"Do you have the evidence?" Hood was carefully studying pink tinged soapy water as it flowed down the drain, giving himself a few more seconds until he had to turn around and pretend that he wasn't in a state of free fall and confusion.

"Got it." The huge man raised the laptop that was almost swallowed by his hand. "Where is Agent Young?"

"They took her to surgery a few minutes ago." Jacob finally turned, drying his hands on a paper towel. "This is nurse…. I'm sorry, I've forgotten your name."

"Stevens, Karen Stevens." The silver-haired woman in dark blue scrubs studied both men. She easily read shock on the younger one's face, but the older one had reverted behind a bland cool mask, though his hazel eyes burned with emotion that was strangely at odds with his determined expression. She knew without being told that still waters ran deep in that one.

"Well, Karen Stevens, this is Special Agent Felix Lee." Hood made the introductions casually, as if they were meeting for coffee, instead of standing in a trauma room with Rachel's blood dotting the floor and staining discarded blankets. "Someone said something about a waiting area, earlier? I'm sure your people want us out of here."

"It's down the hall." Karen indicated the way Felix had come moments earlier. "Before you go, you should have these." She pointed to Rachel's badge, ID, and a small plastic bag, which contained a set of diamond stud earrings, a watch and two gold chains. "If I lock them up, Agent Young won't get them back until she's discharged."

"Oh…ah…thanks." Hood's composure almost cracked when he picked up the jewelry and carefully slid the delicate pieces into his palm. He ran a finger over each item before putting it back into the bag. "Felix, would you take…" he pointed toward the other things.

"You should keep 'em with you, Doc."

"Yeah…yeah, maybe you're right." He pursed his lips, sliding first Rachel's badge and ID into one pocket and her more personal items into another.

* * *

The late afternoon and evening dragged on. It was only broken by the appearance of Ray Wynne who was taken in for questioning on numerous counts ranging from conspiracy to comment a felony up to and including kidnapping. Hood found it strangely satisfying to confront the man, before the soon to be Ex, Deputy Director was hauled off by Director Frank Fuller.

It was full dark and the hospital had grown quiet before Felix Lee returned from successfully bringing Sofia Lyons into custody. It was the first time the young agent had been lead on a task force, but he found no joy in the accomplishment, not with Agent Young still in surgery.

* * *

**April 4, 2009 – 11:42 PM**

"Felix, you should go home, no sense in both of us losing anymore sleep." Hood's comment broke the late night silence in the Surgical Waiting Area.

"She wouldn't want me to." The large black man rested his jaw tiredly on his fist, not budging from where he'd been seated for over two hours.

"If it was you in the Recovery Room, she would have left after talking to the vascular surgeon." Jacob knew it wasn't true, but ached to be alone with his confused thoughts. Maybe then he could figure out a way that the case could have been handled differently, a way that would have kept Rachel safe. He knew it was a useless mental exercise, but it would keep his mind from straying down dark paths he'd visited once before in his life and vowed to never walk again.

"Possibly," Felix nodded. "But she wouldn't leave you." The younger man's statement hung between them. It contained layers and layers of meaning that neither was willing to address. It was easier to take the softly spoken words at face value and drop the subject.

* * *

When Rachel was moved to a room, and they were finally allowed to see her, Agent Lee took up position outside the door. Where he had guarded one before, now he guarded two.

Jacob sat, watching her sleep. It wasn't the first time he'd allowed himself the luxury of doing so, but he was beginning to wonder if it wouldn't be safer for her, if it were the last.

In the beginning, she'd only let down her guard enough to rest, in his presence, on airplanes, and then only after they were safely at cruising altitude. But as time went on, he'd look up and see her napping on the sofa in her room or his, if she had downtime during a case, while he worked. Once she'd fallen asleep with her head on a desk while he'd conducted an extensive computer search at a stem cell storage facility. After Texas, where he'd accidently ingested PCP, she admitted her nights were easier with the door between their adjoining rooms open. For the first time he was allowed to check on her, when the need arose in him. Those nights usually followed a day when she'd brushed too close to danger for his peace of mind. He'd watch her sleeping form from the doorway, until his heart rate returned to normal and his mind wasn't filled with images of her destruction by bullets, fists, or speeding cars.

….But this, what happened in the last day, wasn't so easily washed away.

"Hummm, no," she mumbled and jerked her head to the left.

"Shhh, easy Rachel. You're all right. You're safe." He ran his hand down her left arm until his fingers ringed gauze dressing wrapped around her wrist, above one of her IV's. Earlier, he'd been more concerned with the potentially fatal wound to her thigh and had missed her lesser injuries.

"You're too much of a fighter for your own good." He sighed in a choked voice, unable to blot out the mental image of her cuffed to a bed, struggling against her restraint with enough force to do damage.

"Owww," the sleeping woman moaned and turned to her left. It was a move that was as natural to her sleeping body as breathing - to bring her right knee up and over her straightened left leg, until was laying half on her side and half on her stomach. Tonight it didn't bring her comfort. Her thigh muscles contracted, straining against recently repaired tissue, sending red-hot pain shooting across nerve endings to explode in her brain. "Noooo!" she cried out, clawing at the sheets, trying to pull herself away from whatever was digging into her. "Get away from me!"

"Rachel!" Hood was leaning over her in seconds, a darker shadow in a dark room.

"Don't touch me," she gasped and tried to curl in on herself, only jarring her incision site more.

"Easy, Rachel, it's me, Jacob." He stood quickly, pressing closer to her, needing to see her in the dark.

"Ja…Jacob…my…leg…hurts," she wheezed out each word, one harsh breath at a time.

"You were wounded and have had surgery." He cupped her shoulder with one hand and her cheek with the other. Her skin was hot, feverish, and she shivered beneath his touch. "You need to stay flat."

"But I never sleep on my back." She was bewildered. Her thought process clouded.

"I know you don't, but you need to, until the doctors say otherwise." His lips tightened, as he wondered, for the millionth time who the man had been and where he was now. It was obvious that muscle memory still caused her to turn to him in her sleep because she slept as if she were sprawled with her head on someone's chest, her leg tucked between his legs and her arm flung around his waist. Hood knew exactly what it felt like to have a woman pressed against him like that. He was a back sleeper.

"But…" she didn't want to move, it would hurt, but she trusted Hood and if he said she needed to, she would have to do it.

"Let me help." He slid his right arm under her shoulders as he leaned across her and used his left hand to support her thigh just above the knee but below her surgical dressing. "Put your arms around my neck and hold on tight."

"Don't hurt me?" she whispered as she buried her face against his neck. Rachel was lost in a mist of drugs, a combination of the remnants of anesthesia from surgery and pain medication that did little to dull her pain.

"Never," he almost groaned when he felt her damp tears against his skin. It was too much. In all their time together, no matter what happened, he'd never known her to cry, not even when she'd thought she was going to die from small pox. Once or twice, he'd seen her eyes glisten and her voice grow hoarse, but she'd always been able to regain control. It broke him to know that she'd been broken.

"Hush, it's all right," he reassured her…him…both of them. "Hold on to me tightly. I'm going to count to three and get you onto your back. Let me do all the work." He felt her nod and the damp area under his jaw grew larger. "Ya ready?"

"Just do it." She pressed against his warmth, unsure how long she could hold onto him.

"One…two…three…" He lifted her gently. The back of her knee was cupped carefully in his left palm. He could feel soft skin and then rough dressing as her thigh became more muscular. The side of her breast pressed against his right wrist and his fingers spread along her ribs and tapered to her waist.

"Jacob," she gasped his name and held on tightly, her breathing jagged, unable to keep from crying, as he eased her onto her back.

"Felix," Hood called over his shoulder, his voice was rough and hard. "Get someone in here, now!" The temper he kept under tight lock and key was boiling to the surface. He fought it with everything in him.

"Is she waking up?" A tall gangly male nurse strode through the door and turned on a dim light by the bed. His name badge said he was Carl Swenson, RN, but he looked more like he should be lazing on a California beach saying, 'Yo dude, caught some righteous curl today.' Instead he was doing night duty at a small hospital in rural Maryland.

"She's in pain," Hood rasped. He didn't realize he still had his arms around her and she was still clutching him. "She had rolled on her side, in her sleep, and jarred her leg."

"Sir…I need to…ah…assess her. You're gonna have to…ah…" Carl nodded to the chair beside his patient's bed. "The monitor gives me a lot of information." He indicated the screen above the bed, "But I like to be sure the numbers match a patient's condition."

"I'm…I'm fine, Jacob, really, just cold." Rachel's voice was muffled against his neck. She loosened her tight hold on him and let her hands glided over his shoulders as they fell to her sides.

"You're not fine. You're hurting." He straightened and looked her in the eyes as he ran both thumbs over her damp cheeks. "This young man is going to take care of you for a few minutes, but I'm not going anywhere." He sat back in his chair, his expression filled with worry that he'd been trying to ignore since Rachel had gone running after Sofia behind Ray Wynne's burning weekend home.

"I…" She wanted to argue with him, but he was too perceptive and she too weak to fool him. It was easier to shake her head and believe that none of this was really happening: Hood losing his temper; Hood looking scared because of her; Hood holding her as if she mattered.

"Can't you give her something for pain?" he asked, helping Carl tuck more blankets around her, after the nurse was satisfied with his assessment.

"Still so cold…" she whispered and huddled further under the covers. Jacob took her hand and held it between both of his, trying to transfer as much body heat as possible. For one fleeting moment he was tempted to crawl in beside her and hold her shivering body against his. He'd done it countless times with Maggie as the chemo fought her cancer and she fought the chemo. Both had been losing battles and the very reason he refused to do more than warm Rachel's hand.

"I can now." Swenson carefully recorded her respirations, blood pressure and heart rate on her medication sheet. "The dilaudid will help her sleep and she needs her next dose of antibiotics, as well. That will do more for her chills than all the blankets in the world."

Twenty minutes later she was settled, medications had been given and pillows were propped on either side of her body, to keep her from rolling over in her sleep.

"Sir, I know you're worried, but she really is doing much better." The nurse tried to reassure Hood. "What she needs now is sleep and so do you."

"Are you throwing me out?" Jacob raised his brows and wondered if Felix could take the blonde surfer-looking guy who was in reality a very good nurse.

"I'm asking you nicely to leave. You're not doing her any good by sitting there all night." The young man ran his thumb over the stubble on his jaw, trying to figure out a diplomatic way to state the obvious. He finally shrugged and simply said it. "I get the feeling she worries about you first, but right now she's got to be first. Come back tomorrow when you're a little less…ah…ragged around the edges."

"You're right." Jacob shrugged and stuffed his hands in his pockets. "You're right on all counts. I just want too…" he turned toward the bed. "Just…"

"No problem, I'll give the Agent at the door the phone number for the desk. Call about 0700h and I'll give you an update." Carl walked softly out of the room, allowing the man a few moments of privacy with his…spouse…partner…significant other… It didn't matter to him. He'd seen them interact, even if only for a short time. They were a couple and he figured, with their jobs and all, they were careful to keep it from becoming common knowledge.

"Rachel," Hood leaned close to the sleeping woman, his hand resting lightly on her cheek. "You've gotta get better."

"Jacob." Her eyes opened. She appeared almost lucid for the first time since he'd gotten her back. She covered his hand with hers; trying to reassure him, "Don't look so worried." Her chin tilted until her lips brushed against his palm, leaving a gentle kiss behind. "You'll wake up...soon." She blinked slowly, fighting sleep. "I'm only dreaming you're here," she sighed once and her eyes clouded with confusion. "We're on planet Hood…" Her words slurred as her lids slid closed and the corners of her mouth turned up at the idea of getting to visit a place she knew existed only in his head.

"Ohhh," Jacob groaned, despite her nonsense words that he found strangely endearing, because a lone tear escaped her left eye and crept down her cheek, dampening his fingers and sending tremors through his body. He maintained tight control, watching her sleep, as her tear dried on his skin, and until he was sure there were no more to follow.


	2. Anger

**Disclaimer: **See Chapter 1

**Rating: **PG-13

**Note: **Huge thanks to Obsidian Jade for the beta and hand-holding. You helped keep me on track.

* * *

**Ch 2 – Anger**

_I reached a place where every light is muted, which bellows like the sea beneath a tempest, when it is battered by opposing winds. The hellish hurricane, which never rests, drives on the spirits with its violence; wheeling and pounding, it harasses them._ -From The Divine Comedy Of Dante Alighieri – Inferno – Canto V

* * *

**April 5, 2009 – 1:55 AM (CDT)**

…The gentle touch of Rachel's mouth against his hand had unlocked the door of the cage where he'd successfully hidden his temper, but it was her sleeping tear that ripped it off its hinges. It took all his effort to keep from howling as he stalked from her room, never stopping to acknowledge Felix Lee, waiting in the hall.

"Dr. Hood, what happened?" The tall agent had to scramble to keep up with the older man.

"Not now," Hood hissed over his shoulder. Seconds later he pushed open the door to the stairs, knowing he lacked the patience to wait for an elevator. His footsteps echoed throughout the stairwell, as his downward speed increased. He embraced his anger and let it flow. It was his shield and his protection against all the other feelings that were threatening to boil up inside of him.

"Take it easy, Doc. If you take a tumble and break something, Agent Young will…"

"No!" Jacob turned suddenly, fury radiating off his body. "No. You will not use her like that," he snarled at the big man three feet behind him. "If you can't keep up, fine, but don't hide behind her."

"I'm not…I wouldn't do that." Felix pulled back, shocked at the usually unflappable doctor's display of temper. "Just slow down, before you get hurt."

"I can't. Not now." Hood turned and headed back down the steps at the same breakneck pace. When he hit the lobby he rushed past the deserted information desk and sleepy security guard at the door. His speed propelled him out into the night with Lee trailing relentlessly behind.

Jacob retraced his trip from hours ago, down the sidewalk and around the corner of the building. He looked around frantically, suddenly perplexed, his forward momentum slowed to a stop. Getting there…getting to the place where he'd parked the old truck had been all he'd focused on, as he'd run from Rachel's room, but the vehicle was gone.

"What…where?" he wondered in confusion. Finally giving up, he folded at the waist, with his hands pressed against his knees, too tired to remain upright. "Where'd…it…go?" he took in quick, shallow gasps of chilly night air between each word.

"Take deep easy breathes, Dr. Hood. You're hyperventilating." Felix ignored the stormy glare he was given and reached judiciously for the scientist's shoulder, hoping his training was enough to cope with the brilliant man, Rachel Young usually cared for with such skill and ease. "If you're asking about that old heap you left parked on the sidewalk, Director Fuller had it impounded as evidence."

"Evidence?" Jacob shook his head unsure he heard correctly.

"Not sure if it was to help build a case against Ray Wynne, Sofia Lyons, or both of 'em." Lee shrugged. "Ya gotta ask yourself, who's to blame for the train wreck, the car that's on the tracks, or the person who pushed it there."

"You'll excuse me if I don't appreciate the finer points of legal theory, at the moment." Hood shivered and leaned his head against his bent elbow. The memory of blood squirting from Rachel's thigh, with each beat of her heart, was still fresh in his mind. He believed Wynne and Lyons were equally to blame.

"Got ya." The agent wasn't so keen on it himself, even under better circumstances. Unlike Agent Young and a lot of his colleagues, he had an MBA in Supply Chain Management, not a law degree. "My car is over there." He pointed to a silver sedan parked fifty feet away in the dark lot. "Anytime you're ready."

Hood finally straightened, when he was sure he had at least marginal control over the rage that had sent him into an emotional tailspin. He blinked and took a good look at his companion. He saw panic in Felix's eyes that the young man's voice had hidden. "I'm sorry, I didn't mean to be so hard on you."

"It's okay, Doc, you don't have to say anything." Lee pursed his lips. "We both…well, she'd hate to know it, but we worry about her."

"Yes, we do." Hood nodded, relieved that he wasn't alone in his fears for Rachel.

"But this isn't one of those times, when we need to worry about her, I mean. She's in the hospital, getting good care…" Felix stuttered, unable to ask what he really wanted to know: was Agent Young going to be all right.

"The surgery went well, but we knew that from talking to one of her doctors hours ago. She should be fine." Jacob repeated the four words that had become his mantra, as he'd been unable to rid himself of the image of Rachel weak and vulnerable from lack of care, after being shot. Though he couldn't share that fear with the young agent. She wouldn't want him to. She'd probably be angry if she knew he'd seen her in that condition.

"But…" Lee knew there was a hell of a lot more going on. He'd been the one to answer Hood's sudden call for help. He'd been the one who'd run to the nurses' station and then been forced to watch from the door, as an odd drama had played out in the injured woman's room.

"There's nothing more I can tell you. I'll call the hospital in the morning, but until then…" Hood shrugged, feeling exhaustion in every cell in his body. His head dropped back until he could see the stars that seemed so much brighter away from city lights. His mind still on the fifth floor of the hospital behind them, he whispered, "She said she would be dancing in the galaxies among the stars." It was a quote from a book on grieving that he'd read while Maggie had been dying. When he'd been terrified he'd never get Rachel back alive, the words had returned to haunt him.

"Come on Doc, let's head back to DC."

"No, wait." He pulled his cell phone from his pocket and hit speed dial 2, never taking his eyes off the sky. All Felix could do was standby in the dark parking lot.

"Alex, it's me," Jacob's voice was a low rumble into the phone, his eyes drifting from constellation to constellation. "Sorry to wake you, but we need…

"…Yeah we're about an hour away

"…Thanks, see ya soon."

"Where we going?" The young agent watched the older man who was carefully studying the stars.

"Ah…my sister's." He tucked his cell in his pocket beside an FBI badge and ID that didn't belong to him.

"Look up there, just above the tree line." Hood pointed toward the dark forest behind the hospital. "That's Saturn...setting in the west. It's the bright one with a bit of an orangish cast…just to its right is Leo. Another hour or so and we'd have missed them." The doctor let himself be guided to the car. "It's all about timing," he mused.

"So, where to?" Felix slid behind the wheel and buckled his seat belt as he looked across at the man who was gazing out the window, still concentrating on the heavens. "Dr. Hood, how do I get to your sister's?"

"Oh…sorry. She lives on the Bay, east of Deale, Maryland. Take 301 north to the 4 and then 258 to Deale. I'll have to guide you in from there.

* * *

When they arrived at Alexandra Hood's home, the front light was on. She met them on the wide front porch of the old house, wearing a long green wool robe to keep her warm while she waited.

"Alex, this is Special Agent Felix Lee. Felix, my sister, Alex." Jacob introduced them. His voice was rough and deep, each word forced to sound normal, but never quite achieving it. "Sorry, I should have warned you I was bringing company." His hazel eyes were stormy as they met his sister's.

"You did say 'we' in your call. I made up your old room and a guest room." She smiled gently to hide her worry. She'd fully expected him to show up with Rachel Young. Watching his odd stiff movements and the pain etched on his face, she didn't want to ask why he hadn't. "Are either of you hungry?"

"All I really want is some sleep. I appreciate the hospitality, Ma'am." Felix stood slightly behind Hood's left shoulder. He met the woman's eyes, which were so much like the Doc's. When he was sure he had her attention, he tipped his head slightly in the older man's direction and frowned discreetly.

"Agent Lee, I'll show you to your room." She took his arm and led him to the stairs.

"Call me Felix, Ma'am." He asked quietly. He needed to tell this woman what had happened, but he couldn't do it in front of Hood, who was silently studying the slate floor of the entryway as if it held the secrets to the universe.

"Only if you call me Alex." She peeked over her shoulder at her brother, as she climbed the steps. His hands were stuffed in his pockets, and he was frozen in place in the middle of the hall. "What the hell happened to him and where's Rachel?" she hissed as soon as they reached the landing and were well out of sight.

"Ah…well…Agent Young was…ah…shot---"

"Oh God, when? Is she going to be all right?" Alex knew this was the source of Jacob's unusual behavior. It was why he'd arrived at the house in the middle of the night and it was the cause of his haunted expression and barely contained anger. She'd suspected for a long time that he and the pretty blonde had far more than the professional relationship, Jake claimed. Though, knowing him the way she did, it was possible that he was only realizing it now.

"She was wounded and then…then…" Felix gulped remembering how events had spiraled out of control once Wynne had taken charge. "It took the Doc almost 24 hours to get her back. It was bad…the Bureau wouldn't listen to him…he did it on his own, mostly…I helped toward the end, but…He's not doing so well. I tried, but Ma'am, I just don't know. Something happened in Agent Young's room tonight. I'm not sure if it's her or him or…ah…well I'm just not sure."

"Thank you for making sure he got here safely," Alex sighed and leaned against the wall. "I'll see to him, now. You get some rest."

"My pleasure, Ma'am. If there's anything I can do, just call out."

"Thanks." She smiled realizing her usually introverted brother had gained another very loyal friend.

* * *

Alex found Jacob in the dining room, filling a double old-fashioned glass with scotch. He drank it down quickly and poured another.

"Jake, what are you doing?"

"Drinking," he rasped and took a large gulp, letting the amber liquid burn his throat until he shuddered. "I'd think that would be obvious."

"It isn't like you to abuse your scotch or for that matter alcohol of any kind." She'd given him the eighteen-year old Bowmore Single Malt for his birthday, and didn't give a damn if he poured it down the sink. She thought it tasted like dirt. But she hated to see him do something so contrary to his character.

"Dammit, stay out of this, Alexandra." He grabbed the bottle and his glass from the sideboard, turned and headed toward the back of the house. Every muscle in his body was clenched tightly, as he pulled his temper warm around him to keep from feeling anything else.

"Jacob, talk to me," Alex demanded as he brushed past her. In exasperation, she followed quickly behind and found him sitting on the back porch swing, staring out at the Chesapeake Bay on the other side of the small wooded area that bordered her yard. He was leaning forward, elbows on his knees, the glass gripped in both hands and the bottle on the floor at his feet.

"Jake," Alex sighed as she sat beside him and gently rubbed her hand up and down his back. She'd only seen him this lost once before. It had been over four years ago in Palo Alto, California. She'd been visiting, and he'd just learned that Maggie's tumor wasn't responding to chemo.

If something had happened to Rachel Young, she wasn't sure her brother would survive it. Alex had sat back and watched as a friendship had grown between the two of them. She strongly suspected Jake had allowed himself to care for the FBI agent under the mistaken belief that the woman was indestructible and therefore safe. "Is Rachel going to be all right?"

"How did you know about...?" He didn't bother to finish the question. The answer was obvious, Felix had told her. "Damn!" he exploded and threw his glass with all his might. "Can't a man have any privacy anymore?" For one small moment his wrath burned clean and clear, allowing him to breathe easily. Then he heard the tinkle of fine crystal shattering in the distance. It left his emotions splintered and painful, many of them hardly recognizable, making him long for the familiarity of anger.

"I hope that made you feel better. You know the rule: you break it, you buy it."

"I thought that only applied to Owen?" He glared into the dark woods, which were caught between the lighter black of the Chesapeake, and shadows cast into the yard from a lighted room on the floor above. He was confused and lost, feeling very much akin to those shadows.

"When you act like my eight year-old son, you get treated like him." Alex wrapped her arm around his stiff body and pulled him closer. "You've got to be freezing. Where's your coat?"

"I threw it away. It was covered in blood." He knew it was an exaggeration, but he also knew that he'd never be able to wear that jacket again.

"What! You're not…no one said you were hurt, too." She looked him over carefully for injuries.

"It wasn't mine." He finally turned and met his sister's eyes. "It was Rachel's," her name caught in his throat. "It was close…too close. She was bleeding and there was nothing I could do. Nothing to use as a tourniquet…nothing." He shook, resenting every second he'd lost in a furtive search for a belt or a piece of rope, anything to tie above the gaping wound that bled freely once Sofia had yanked out the bolt, as a final act of anger on her way out the door. "One of us is gonna have to start wearing a belt," he muttered. "That is if…" he shrugged unwilling to take that thought to its final conclusion.

"But she's all right now?" Alex dug for the information she needed.

"They operated on her for five hours tonight. I left her sleeping. She's pale and has a fever, but…" He needed desperately to talk to someone about what had happened and was sure Alex would understand. She was family, not FBI; surely it would be all right for her to know. He realized that was why he'd come here in the middle of the night. "I need to tell you something, but it can't go any further."

"You can say anything to me, Jake. That's what sisters are for."

"Yeah, well right now I wish I hadn't sent that glass flying." He picked up the bottle and ran his thumb over the bold lettering on the label. If there was ever a time for Dutch courage, it was now.

"You can always drink straight from the bottle." Alex bumped his shoulder with hers and grinned at him. He was stalling and they both knew it. She understood her brother and waited, giving him all the time and space he needed. Thoughts and ideas were Jacob Hood's forte, but emotions, especially putting those emotions into words, were much more difficult.

"No…no…I'm not that desperate." He raised his brow at his little sister. "Good Single Malt is a long way from that stuff you drink, when you get together with your friends." It was a reference from seven years earlier. Jake had flown it to be with Alex the week her divorce was final. One night he'd discovered her in the living room with two girl friends. They'd been just the sober side of drunk, dancing to rock music and passing a bottle of wine between them.

"I wasn't suggesting you dance." She chuckled at the thought. "Though I'd pay good money to see it."

"Please, that's a girl thing…what do you call it, _dancing it out_?" A memory, sharp and clear caught him by surprise. "Ah...Rachel…ah…does…" his words ground to a halt and his smile faded. He could still taste the terror from that night. They'd solved the smallpox virus case hours earlier. Both he and Rachel had gone to bed exhausted, but he'd been unable to sleep. Needing to check on her one last time, he'd moved silently to the partially opened door between their rooms. Instead of the sleeping woman he'd expected to see, she was up dancing. The flood of moonlight that illuminated her room, washed though her hair until it was almost silver and played against the hollows of her cheeks. Squinting, he was able to make out her iPod buds in her ears. Her eyes were closed as she'd moved to music only she could hear. The small bottle of red wine dangling from her fingers was almost black against the white of her robe.

Silence stretched between them as the memory flowed over Jacob, making him shiver. "I…ah…thought she was going to die that time, too," he whispered and then finally he began to speak. "You know how Rachel is, strong, dedicated, determined and stubborn as they come?"

All Alex could do was nod, afraid that if she interrupted his thought process, his words would cease.

"Twice, first in the emergency room and then again in her room, she passed out. I was holding her and one second she was there and the next she wasn't. It was like she…"

"Jake," his sister demanded. "She didn't die. She isn't Maggie."

"I know. She survived this time, but death brushed so close to her, I could smell it in the air." He straightened his spine and glared out into the night. A cynical voice deep inside of him wondered if death kept score. He'd already lost once, before he'd started with the FBI, was It trying to even things a bit for all the lives he and Rachel had saved in the last year?

"Jake--"

"Wait, there's more." He turned to his sister, hoping she would understand. "She's this tough FBI Agent, who can kick in doors, and fight like a man. She thinks there is nothing she can't do but tonight that was all gone. I'm not sure if it was the drugs, or the pain, or the fever, or some combination of it all…but… Alex, she was in pieces. She cried, she broke down and cried." He closed his eyes remembering her tears wetting his neck and his body absorbing the sobs she'd been too weak to suppress. "I held on to her so Felix wouldn't hear or see anything from the door. She wouldn't want anyone to know. But I _know_. I saw and heard it all," his voice was husky, hardly above a whisper as he wondered why he'd been given the information and how the hell he was supposed to live with it.

"You're a good man, Jacob." Alex smiled gently at her brother, hearing all the feelings that were buried in his words. She understood what he was refusing to see. He had needed to hold onto Rachel, as much as the injured woman had needed to be held.

"If I'm so good, why am I so angry at every one and everything involved, including her?"

"Because, as brilliant as you are, you've still managed to maintain your humanity and with that, comes all those pesky human emotions." She watched his face smooth out as he carefully composed himself. "You don't like to admit they are there, you never have, but, big brother, you've got 'em."

"I'm not sure I can do this anymore," he sighed, facing the truth for the first time. "It's too much. It's asking too much."

"You're quitting? You're going back to the university?" Alex's brows rose in surprise. She thought he really enjoyed what he was doing as Special Science Advisor for the FBI, even if it meant working for the establishment.

"Hardly. Publications are how one's worth is measured in the academic world. Patents give you clout with the administration. I haven't written or done research in over three years." He thought of the registered letter on his desk from Tom Burton, Chairman of the Science Department at Stanford, advising him that he'd used up all of his family leave and that they couldn't grant him further Sabbatical Time. "As intriguing as pure research is, I get much more satisfaction out of seeing first hand the difference my ideas can make in people's lives."

"Then what are you planning? If you're not leaving, what're you talking about?"

"I don't want to have this conversation tonight." He shook his head, unable to say out loud that he was contemplating having Rachel transferred off his detail.

"No…wait…" his sister gasped when she realized what he was thinking. "You weren't referring to yourself. This is about Agent Young. You're planning to get rid of her." Alex recognized the steely expression in her brother's eyes and she hurt for him. He'd always excelled at building emotional walls, but she didn't realize this one existed.

He glared at her refusing to confirm or deny anything.

"You can't."

"I can do whatever I please." He had to put an end to this before he crumpled. "Part of the deal I cut with Frank Fuller, when I agreed to a protection detail, was that I'd try anyone he provided, but if things didn't work out, he or she would be sent packing. The decision was up to me."

"But you like working with Rachel. You like spending time with her and she's very good at her job." Alex argued.

"Do you think this is easy for me? We get along and my job goes smoother when she's there." He glared at her and tried one last attempt to make her understand. "Did you know that members of the FBI Executive Protection Detail are nicknamed _bullet catchers_?" He stood up, and handed the bottle of scotch to his sister while he let her absorb that choice piece of trivia.

"Oh, God," she whispered.

"Exactly." He turned and had his hand on the door before Alex could think of anything to say.

"Jake, give the matter more thought." She looked at him with pleading eyes. "If you're still determined to go through with it, please promise me you'll talk it over with Rachel first. She deserves to know the truth." Though she doubted her brother understood the truth, so there was little hope he'd share it with the woman who had so unexpectedly become an important part of his life.

"I…all I can promise is that I'll sleep on it." He smiled and ignored the pain that felt like ground glass tearing through his lungs when he contemplated a life without Rachel Young to keep him on his toes.

* * *

**April 6, 2009 – 10:30 (CDT)**

Rachel was tired and cranky. Dinner trays had long since come and gone. She hadn't eaten much and wasn't sure if that was a comment on hospital food or her appetite.

She was frustrated by how quickly she tired. The small amount of energy she'd woken with had been used up that morning when Hood had come by for a visit. It had been a smart move on her part to draw heavily on her reserves and act naturally. The man had suggested replacing her as his handler and protection detail, just because of an itty-bitty wound. If he'd seen her look the least bit weak, she was sure she would have found herself with a new assignment. No matter what argument she'd given him.

Damn, him anyhow! They were a team. How dare he decide her job was too dangerous? He hadn't used exactly those words, but that's what he'd meant. She put up with his silly antics, he could damn well put up with her.

In irritation, she pushed against the mattress with her left foot and pulled on the trapeze that had been added to her bed to facilitate turning and getting out of bed. It took her a few minutes, but by carefully guiding her right leg with her free hand, she was able to change position with almost no pain. It helped that the injured leg was encased in a blue padded brace from the top of her thigh to her ankle.

Once she was comfortable, her eyes slipped closed. The lights were dimmed in her room and the head of her bed was propped up to almost sitting height. For the moment she let go of the anger that had been building all-day and simply relaxed and allowed the hospital noises to drift around her.

* * *

Forty-five minutes later, Carl Swenson was settling his patients for the night when he saw a tall familiar curly-haired man sneak out of the stairwell. He couldn't really say he hadn't expected his appearance, not after what he'd seen the night before. With a shake of his head, he walked quickly to intercept him.

"Mr. Young, visiting hours have been over for quite a while." Swenson's voice was tinged with reproach, though he spoke softly so as not to wake any sleeping patients.

Hood froze. There it was again, the name thing. He knew he had to come clean about it soon, but it wasn't going to be tonight. He wanted to see Rachel, if only for a few minutes, but it was very late. He'd spent all afternoon and most of the evening being deposed by FBI lawyers and they weren't through with him yet.

"Ah…yes, I know, but she asked me to bring her some things from home." Jacob held Rachel's small back travel bag in front of him as proof of his statement.

"I'll give it to her." Carl was irritated. His patient had had a rough day. She'd needed family around but from the information he'd gotten in report, this man had only paid one short visit that morning. There had been no other visitors, though her room looked like a florist was about to set up shop in there.

"I was tied up at work, or I would have been here sooner." Hood ran one hand through his already unruly hair, wishing he had someone to cut through all the red tape and bullshit for him. "She was so much better this morning. I want to be sure she still is."

"Agent Young is a lot better than last night, though she's been tired and her mood hasn't been the most cooperative." Carl shook his head, seeing again, what he'd seen the night before. This man clearly cared about the injured woman and just as clearly lived in a very different world from the average person.

"She can be stubborn." Hood acknowledged with a knowing grin.

"And then some." The nurse agreed. He'd had two conversations with her, since coming on duty. In his professional opinion she was angry, but he knew it was a normal response when a person was hurt.

"But she is all right?"

"She's doing pretty much as expected. Her temperature has been elevated all day and then spiked this evening." The nurse took pity on the worried man and gave him a full report. "Day shift indicated she didn't eat as well as they would have liked, but that should improve once PT gets her up and moving, tomorrow. A tech from The Brace Shop was by and immobilized her right leg from her hip to her ankle. It'll make getting around easier and less painful. I was supposed to pull her IV, but she choked on her antibiotics in pill form and didn't take kindly to the suggestion of grinding them up and eating them in apple sauce." He grinned at the memory. That had definitely been a display of anger. "Your lady has a colorful vocabulary when she's pissed."

"That she does," Hood laughed quietly. "Try orange juice."

"Pardon?"

"Orange juice, it's how she gets her vitamins down. She has trouble with anything larger than an aspirin." He had a strong memory of Rachel, with a frown on her face, standing in any number of hotel rooms. She had a small bottle of orange juice in one hand and was gulping down pill after pill with the other. He'd seen it so often; it wasn't something he thought about anymore.

"Thanks, I'll make a note of it."

"Look, I know it's late, but can I see her for just a few minutes." Hood pushed.

"All right, I guess I owe you for the tip on the o.j." Carl sighed, wondering if anyone was ever able to say 'no' to this man. "You've got half-an-hour, but keep it down. Everyone else is sleeping. I'm gonna grab a cup of coffee, while I finish the charting on the rest of my patients, then I'm heading down to Agent Young's room to settle her in for the night."

Jacob stood in the doorway watching Rachel sleep. The head of her bed was raised like it had been when he'd seen her earlier in the day. She had one pillow wedged under her right side and another tucked under her left arm. The pillows supported her at an angle with her left leg bent at the knee and the one encased in a long blue contraption with numerous Velcro straps, was thrust out straight. He grinned when he looked down the length of her injured leg. Her slim foot sported shiny red toenail polish. _Who would have thought?_

As he moved closer to her bed, he saw that she was dreaming. Her eyes, under closed lids, moved quickly back and forth in active REM sleep. She looked vulnerable and unprotected. Usually she was awake in an instant if anyone unexpected entered a room when she was sleeping. He knew she'd gotten used to him moving around their various hotel rooms and suites, but this was different. She had no way of knowing he was there.

"Rachel," he spoke softly and ran his hand gently along her arm.

"Jacob?" She frowned in confusion, trying to open her eyes. Her lids felt as if they weighed a ton, so she gave up the battle.

"Yeah, it's me. Go back to sleep." He smiled and pulled the blankets over her shoulders. "I brought your things and left you a note."

"'K…" she sighed, doubting he was really there.

He reached for his pen and the note in his pocket. He'd written it incase they wouldn't let him in tonight. After quickly scribbling a few added lines, he read it through and hesitated. What the hell was he doing? He'd spent most of the night before convinced that he needed to break up their team. Was it really fair to either of them to give her added reassurance that he'd changed his mind, when he still had doubts?

Realizing he was too tired and had been through too much in the last few days to make a determination of that magnitude, he decided to revisit the issue later, when all the data was in. Until then, he'd do everything in his power to make Rachel's recovery as smooth as possible.

* * *

"Jacob…" Rachel muttered as she felt a man's hand gently touch her arm, again.

"No, ma'am, it's Carl, your nurse. I need to give you your antibiotics." He'd carefully recorded her vitals from her monitor and was rubbing the cap to her IV with an alcohol swab.

"No more pills tonight," she groaned softly. She didn't think there was anything left in her stomach from her last attempt to gag down her medication. "Too tired…"

"No worries, you get them the easy way tonight." He injected slowly so the caustic medication wouldn't hurt as it entered her vein. "Tomorrow morning I'll give you some orange juice and see if that doesn't makes the pills easier to swallow."

"That should work." She smiled without opening her eyes. "There for a minute I thought you were…" she shook her head slightly. When he'd first touched her, she'd been sure Hood was in the room with her. She'd even heard his voice, "…must be dreaming. At least tonight it wasn't a nightmare."

"You didn't dream him. Your husband was here."

"Huh?" She blinked slowly, trying to make sense out of what she'd just heard.

"Ms Young, only a spouse or parents of an underage child are allowed in after visiting hours." He raised his brow in warning. "He left you a note and these." He handed her an envelope and her reading glasses.

"Oh?" She was being told something important, but she couldn't make sense of it. "Hood was here?"

"Well, come to think of it, he never really introduced himself." Swenson grinned at the man's tactics. "But if you mean the really worried guy from last night, then yeah, he was here. Though tonight he came alone."

She remembered fragments from her nightmare the night before. She'd been in pain and very cold…she thought she remembered Jacob's voice. One moment he'd been soothing and the next filled with anger…

"You need to get some sleep." Carl gathered up his things and handed Rachel a small control box. "The blue button will turn off the light," he offered so she could read her letter in privacy.

"Thanks you." She smiled and put on her glasses.

_Rachel,_

_I won't be in until dinnertime. _

_Legal at the Bureau has my morning all planned out for me. We had so much fun today that we have another go round tomorrow. _

_I've got a meeting with your Detail Chief, TC McGruder, after lunch. He's going to introduce me to my temporary handler. If you can dig up any dirt on a guy named Carson Dilworth, it will make my next few months easier. _

_I'm not looking forward to this._

_Take care of yourself,_

_Jacob_

_PS: I'll bring supper. They tell me hospital food isn't to your taste._

_By the way, I really like the toenail polish!_

The last two lines were evidently a quick addition and made her laugh for the first time in days.


	3. Bargaining Jacob

**Disclaimer: **See chapter 1

**Beta: **Obsidian Jade - any errors here are mine since I'm never able to resist tweaking at words and phrases. Thanks for the patience and reassurances.

**Note:** I've cut this chapter in half since it was going way long even for me. I really wanted to give Rachel the time she deserves. I blame Jacob and Rachel for the length. According to my outline, I was supposed to get much further in this than I did in the unsplit version, but once they started talking to one another, they wouldn't stop.

**Guest Appearances and disclaimers: **This is not a crossover. But three characters, that may be familiar to some, appear in a story that Jacob tells Rachel over dinner. Jethro Gibbs and Jenny Shepard belong to _NCIS_ and Paramount Studios. Pamela Landy belongs to whoever holds the rights to the _Jason_ _Bourne_ movies.

* * *

**Ch – 3 – Bargaining - Jacob**

_Like other souls, we shall seek out the flesh that we have left, but none of us shall wear it; it is not right for any man to have what he himself has cast aside_. The Divine Comedy Of Dante Alighieri – Inferno – Canto XIII

* * *

Rachel maneuvered carefully around the corner. Her pace had slowed considerably since she'd left her room over half an hour earlier. She felt as if she were running an endless version of the obstacle course at Quantico, when in reality she was a few yards short of five laps around the fifth floor and had three more to go. Down the hall, past the nursing station, down another hall, beyond the elevators and then the long straightaway to where her room was located. Her physical therapist had told her that eight circuits of the misshapen oval added up to one mile.

Six months ago, when she'd taken the Bureau's yearly fitness test, her average time had been nine minutes per mile, in full gear and weapons. It disgusted her that wearing nothing more than grey running shorts; a yellow sweatshirt with sleeves cut out at the shoulders; a slipper on the foot of her uninjured leg; and the all important accessory of a padded leg brace, her time was so poor. In a fit of temper she blamed it on the crutches she'd learned to use that morning, though in reality, without them, she was going nowhere.

"Some agent I am," she grumbled quietly. "I'll be lucky to finish this in under an hour." It wasn't helping that it took all her concentration to master the unsteady three-point gate, which was the only way she could get around. "At least it's keeping my deltoids and biceps in shape," she muttered as her arms bore her entire weight while her body swung carefully between precariously placed crutch tips.

"Hello there." Anger, sorrow and something deep and smoky curled in Hood's belly and pounded at his senses when he saw her jump slightly. He'd caught her by surprise and startled her.

"Ah… Hi, yourself," she stuttered.

"Your nurse said you were in your room." He nodded toward the door a few feet behind him "I guess she didn't know you'd escaped." He was blocking her path, with one shoulder leaning against the wall, as he studied her. His face was in shadows, but his arms were crossed and he looked large, dark and ornery.

"When I saw her awhile back, going into someone else's room, I told her I was heading this way." Rachel's cheeks were flushed from exertion and she gritted her teeth as she repositioned her hold on the handgrips of her crutches. It frightened her that she'd come so close to losing her balance. She glared at him, irritated and embarrassed that he'd been watching her when she was having so much trouble maneuvering.

"But you didn't bother to tell her you weren't planning on going back to bed." He couldn't believe she was up and about so soon. He'd have been happy to find her sitting in a chair, but wandering the corridors was too much. "What the hell do you think you're doing?" he ground out each word huskier than the last. All his carefully controlled emotions hammered to be set free.

"Physical therapy," Rachel snapped, frustrated with her lack of progress and angry that she was so unsteady. "I've got three more laps of the corridors and then I'll have completed a mile." She stuck her nose in the air, daring him to argue with her.

"Is it still considered physical therapy if you fall on your ass and rip open the incision on your thigh?" He challenged, using the same unyielding tone he'd used the morning before, when he'd suggested she find another assignment. It made her feel as if someone had kicked her in the chest.

"I don't know what you mean." She faced him squarely, denying that her arms felt like rubber and her good leg was beginning to shake. Rachel let her anger bubble to the surface. It made her feel stronger, better able to deal with Jacob Hood acting totally out of character.

"Hmmm, then you won't mind a small experiment." As he spoke, he lightly nudged her left shoulder with two fingers. She wobbled and fought for control, but her muscles were too tired to obey. Moments later her crutches bounced and clattered at her feet. She grabbed for the nearest handhold, the front of his jacket. But she lacked her usual coordination and speed and would have landed in a heap on the floor, if he hadn't clutched her securely around the waist.

"Are you crazy?" the words ripped from her as she clung to him. She hated being weak and dependent, especially in front of this man who she was supposed to protect.

"It's not _my_ sanity that's in question at the moment." As much as he wanted to pick her up and carry her the few remaining feet to her room, he knew it wouldn't end well if he did. The last thing she needed was to be overpowered by anyone or anything else.

"I hate this," Rachel growled in temper but held onto him tighter. She couldn't remember the last time she'd been physically unable to do something that she really wanted to do.

"I know, but the outcome could have been so much worse." His voice broke as he ran one hand over the soft skin of her bare shoulder and upper arm.

"I get it, Hood, believe me I do." All her anger couldn't suppress the shiver that ran through her body when she remembered the exact moment she'd looked her own mortality straight in the eyes and hadn't flinched. Instead she'd spoken of him. She'd told Sofia that Hood was a genuinely good man and a genius but that Lyons might be expecting too much, because he wasn't practical. Rachel had been wrong about that, and knew she'd never tell him that she'd doubted his ability to find her alive.

"Just give yourself a minute to get your equilibrium back." Though it was his equilibrium that was in a tailspin. When he'd found her missing from her room, he hadn't known what to think. When he'd discovered her hobbling down the hall, he'd been swamped with conflicting emotions he couldn't name and didn't understand. He'd finally recognized anger and let it take the lead. It was easily expressed and kept him from having to deal with any of the others.

"I'm okay, now." She put some distance between them. She liked being in his arms far too much for her own good. It was a new feeling and totally out of place in their relationship. That way led to disaster both personally and professionally. She transferred her right hand from his shoulder to the safety rail on the wall and finally looked up to meet his penetrating gaze.

Jacob watched her carefully to be sure she maintained her balance, one hand near hers on the railing and the other still resting on her waist. He knew arguing with her would only make her more determined to have her own way. It struck him that they were in an odd role reversal and, as much as he was enjoying it, once Rachel realized what was going on, she wouldn't. If they ever got to a place in their lives where he was allowed to look out for her, too, it would have to be because she permitted it. Having it forced on her due to an injury would only lead to resentment.

"All right, here's the deal." Hood decided to play hardball. "I'll pick up those crutches and give them back to you, but the only place you're going is straight to your room. Once we've eaten the dinner I brought, if you still want to finish your mile, I will accompany you. Then you stay put for the rest of the night."

"That's two deals." Rachel had a mutinous look on her face, as she weighed her chances of bending down and retrieving the crutches without falling ignominiously at his feet.

"Take it or leave it." He shrugged his shoulders and wouldn't budge. "It's you're choice."

"And if I say no?" She thrust out her chin and curled her lip. He'd seen her use that expression before. It usually signaled that a right hook or a drawn weapon weren't far behind, but this time she wasn't armed and he knew if she took a swing at him, she'd end up on the floor.

"I've carried you once before. You don't weigh much and I doubt that leg brace adds more than a few pounds. No reason I can't do it again." He shifted to her side and wrapped his arm around her shoulders, bending slightly at the knees in preparation to pick her up.

"Wait," she gasped and shook her head, trying to make sense of hazy disjointed memories. "That was real?" her voice quavered in doubt.

"Umhm." He nodded. "Don't you remember?" Those frantic moments in the truck and running into the hospital were some of the most frightening of his adult life. It was hard to imagine she didn't recall them with the same intense clarity.

"I'm sorry, Jacob, I...ah…just hand me the crutches, please. You win." A cloudy, uncertain memory began to clear. It was of Hood's face inches away from hers. He was frightened, worried and demanding, as he'd quietly pleaded with her to stay awake and alive as she clung to him. Then everything became chaotic. There were loud voices and bright lights. She no longer felt the warmth of his arms around her as strangers took his place. "I was sure it was some sort of fever induced hallucination."

"No, I wish it had been, but it wasn't." He bent and reached for her crutches, giving them back to her one at a time.

"Damn," she sighed, wondering if any of the other fragments of nightmare that haunted her sleep were true. If they were that meant Jacob had seen her crying and out of control. If they weren't then she had started dreaming about him. Rachel wasn't sure which was worse.

They made their way to her room without exchanging a word. Every time Hood looked in her direction, a swing of long blonde hair blocked her face from view. He knew she was upset or she wouldn't have capitulated so easily.

"Let me help you." He offered as she handed him her crutches after sitting on her bed.

"I've got to do it myself." She grabbed the trapeze above her head with one hand and a Velcro straps on her brace with the other. In one careful move she picked up her injured leg and turned, until she was situated comfortably with her back supported against her pillow and both legs straight out in front of her.

"Look, Hood, I know I've been out of it for a bit and you…well…you saw me at my worst." She took a deep breath, knowing she had to continue no matter how embarrassing it would be if she discovered he had doubts. "But I can still protect you."

"Rachel--" He was caught completely by surprise as he was setting out containers of Italian food on her tray table.

"No, listen to me. Even now I could do it. I may not have my weapon, but I'd find a way. You're safe. You don't need to worry about that." She leaned forward, curling her left foot beneath her body, intent on getting her point across.

"Rachel, stop it." In two quick steps he was at her side and sitting on her bed. Her brace brushed against left hip and his knee pressed into her other calf above where it was twisted under her. Neither were aware of how close they sat or how intimate their position, as each was caught up in emotions they didn't understand.

"But…" she interjected.

"No!" He gripped her shoulders fighting the urge to shake some sense into her. "It hasn't been my safety I've been worried about." He had a strange sense of déjà vu. He'd had almost the same conversation with her in the Emergency Room when she'd been out of her head with pain and fever.

"But…yesterday morning…you said…you wanted to let me go."

"That's not what I said." He looked her in the eyes, not letting her gaze waver. Didn't she understand the internal battle he was fighting? He didn't want her to leave, but he didn't want her dead, either. He knew he'd walk out of her life and never look back, if that was what it took to keep her alive. But it just wasn't a bargain he was willing to make until he had all the data. All that he really knew right now was that having one woman die in his arms was more than enough for any man's lifetime.

"Ah…ah…you said that I almost died and…" She pursed her lips trying to remember his precise words, but they were overshadowed by his suggestion that she could leave his detail if she liked. "That it bothered you?"

"That's close enough." He was relieved that she was vague on the words he'd used. She'd caught him in a vulnerable moment and he'd spoken more freely than he'd intended.

"I thought you'd lost confidence in me and were just trying to be polite." She should've been more careful when chasing Sofia. It had been a rooky mistake to get caught in the glare of motion triggered yard lights.

"Me, polite? Please, Rachel when have you ever known me to mince words?" He looked shocked.

"Well, now that you mention it, never." She grinned at him for the first time since he'd arrived. "I just had to be sure, especially after discovering that you'd seen me…well, it couldn't have been very pleasant to have had to carry me, all bleeding and weak, like that."

"It certainly wasn't, so please, don't every make me do it again." His heart pounded at the memory. He hadn't given a damn about the blood. He'd been so relieved to have her back; all that had mattered had been getting her to the medical care she needed.

"It's a deal then. I won't get shot and you won't have to carry me." She reached out and they shook hands, both of them laughing, both of them relieved that the unusual emotions that had them acting so out of character were swept aside by humor.

* * *

Hood made himself comfortable on the foot of her bed as they shared her tray table. Over Cesar Salad and pasta he told her about his day. "I think Legal is finally through with me, at least for the time being. They'd been questioning Mal Sheppard, the psychiatrist who was supposed to be caring for Sofia. A closer look at his records showed a number of discrepancies in the use of controlled substances. When he was confronted with additional charges of possible drug trafficking, the doctor gave them all the information they needed to put Wynne away for a long time. He was still talking, trying to cut some sort of deal, when I went off to my meeting with McGruder."

"How'd that go?" She pushed a crouton around her plate trying to appear nonchalant, though she was burning with curiosity. "What do you think of Carson Dilworth?"

"He wasn't what I'd anticipated." Up until then, Hood had been assigned younger agents with less seniority. According to Dilworth, he'd been with the Bureau for over twenty-five years. "And he seems kind of an odd duck."

"That's the pot calling the kettle black," she laughed softly at his indigent expression.

"Rachel, are you saying I'm odd?" He knew she must be feeling better, if she was teasing him again. He'd been right to insist she rest and eat.

"Well, if the shoe fits…?" she grinned relieved that he seemed disgruntled with his new handler.

"What's with the idioms all of the sudden?" He was beginning to think her pain medication had taken control of her tongue.

"I'd never say odd exactly, more like eccentric." Her eyes sparkled.

"This from the woman who drives like a maniac and thrives on danger." As soon as Jacob said it, he knew he shouldn't have. Before he could ruin her mood or his, he changed the subject. "Tell me more about Carson Dilworth?"

"Dilly seems strange because he's a product of a different era of FBI training. He tries, he really does," she giggled, earning her an odd look from Hood that she missed. "He doesn't have much of a sense of humor and goes completely by the book."

"That makes him a male version of you, or at least how you were when we first began working together?"

"Nooo, not at all." She crossed her arms and glared at him. But took the snide remark as payback for teasing him earlier. "I can't imagine what was going through the Iceman's mind when he assigned Carson to work with you." She shook her head in wonder.

"Iceman?" Hood looked momentarily confused.

"My boss, Detail Chief Tyler C. McGruder, the head of the Executive Protection Detail. I hear he picked up the nickname when he was a Marine sniper during Desert Strom and it stuck. I guess it would have to. He was the commanding officer at Scout Sniper School when the Director convinced him to leave the Corp and head up the EPD." She knew about the elite facility her boss used to command. It trained Marines from the 5th Marine Division; Soldiers from the Army's 25th Infantry; and Navy Seals from Navy Seal Delivery Team 1. It was speculated that covert agents from the CIA put in time there, but that was one area that Rachel refused to dwell on.

"I've heard of it. With a background like that I can see why Frank wanted him. If you know how to kill a person, you'll know how to train people to protect 'em." Jacob played poker with Frank, Ty and a few others when he was in town. He knew more about McGruder than Rachel realized.

"Why do you think it's odd that Dilworth was assigned as my temporary handler?" Hood respected the silver-haired, cool-eyed ex-sniper, who was Rachel's boss and didn't think he took his job or Detail Group lightly.

"Don't get me wrong, Carson Dilworth is an excellent agent, but he lives for rules and structure. You're going to drive each other crazy. I can't decide if McGruder is trying to convince Dilly to finally retire or if he's got it in for you." She shrugged, wondering if there was something she'd missed. "Though you've been really good lately, if you don't count this whole Sofia and Wynne thing."

"I hardly think Ty holds me accountable for that." He thought for a moment, wondering if his other connection with TC McGruder was worth mentioning. "There is…ah…one other thing."

"What have you done and how did it get past me?" Rachel couldn't believe Hood had gotten himself into trouble that she didn't know about and therefore hadn't been able to rectify before it came to the attention of her boss.

"It's no big deal really. I sometimes play poker with Frank and his buddies. The last time we were in town, I had a Jack-high flush that beat out McGruder's nine-high flush in the final hand of the night. Your boss had some big money in the pot. But he doesn't seem like the type of guy who'd carry a grudge for that?"

"Hold it!" She raised her hand, palm up. "Stop right there. Please tell me that you were with the Director at all times and under his security umbrella?" Things had changed a great deal in the eighteen months they'd been working together. There had been no recent threats on Jacob's life and Rachel's role had become more his handier than bodyguard. But she was still concerned about his safety.

"I was perfectly safe. The place was crawling with silent, armed guys dressed in black. There must have been ten of them checking windows and doors. I never realized Frank required so much protection." He felt sorry for his old friend. Jacob knew what it was like having just one bodyguard, but to have so many would have driven him nuts.

"Director Foster has a detail but they've got orders to be unobtrusive…" her voice trailed off as she thought of something else. "Did you…were you playing in the Bourbon and Scotch games?" She felt a bit foolish asking since she'd always believed they were a unique DC urban legend.

"Yeah, I think someone jokingly called them that." He didn't like the shocked look on Rachel's face.

"My God, Hood, you never cease to amaze me. No wonder Ray Wynne was out to get you." Her heart was pounding. She had proof those damn things existed, but couldn't say a word about it to anyone. "That group is rumored to consist of some of the most powerful men in DC. There isn't an ambitious person in town who wouldn't give their first born to be invited just once." Again it was all gossip and innuendo, but if Jacob was telling the truth…her mind swung to dark, hazy rooms where secrets were exchanged along with cards.

"You're exaggerating, they're just some friends of Frank's." He shrugged, not sure what all the fuss was about. "Someone's been pulling your leg---"

"Leave my leg out of this, thank you very much." She leaned forward to open the straps on her brace and massage tired muscles in her calf and very gingerly her damaged thigh. She knew she should be doing the demanding set of stretches PT had prescribed, but there was no way she'd submit herself to that particular brand of torture in front of an audience.

"Sorry, bad choice of words." He rolled his eyes and grinned, relieved that her quick wit was back, despite the pain he saw mirrored in her eyes.

In an attempt to take Rachel's mind off her cramping leg, he decided to tell her more about his poker nights, since she appeared to be interested in them. "It's just a friendly game. The stakes are a bit high at times, but friendly, not some shadowy backchannel meeting of the powers that be. Though once Chief Justice Sprague came by for a while. He's got an amazing mind, though I can't say I agree with him on many issues.

"The real regulars are Frank; your boss; two different women named Jenny; a man the redheaded Jenny calls Jethro but McGruder calls Gunny; and another woman named Pamela."

"Wait. Hold it. There are women at these poker games?" She looked a bit incredulous. There were any number of extremely powerful females in the District but Rachel couldn't imagine any of them had been able to invade such a good old boys' bastion of chauvinism as the B and S games were purported to be. If there were women, it was for one reason only.

"Umhm." Hood nodded innocently.

"The Director is married. He always seemed so straight laced. And you…." She shook her finger in at him. Jacob was teasing her, he had to be, but she was willing to play along.

"He is straight laced." Hood's brows rose when he realized what Rachel must have been thinking. "Agent Young, you have a dirty mind. Those women where there to play poker, like the rest of us. Pamela is married to a cardiac surgeon. She said she is a Section Chief in Virginia. That would be Quantico, right? I've never seen her around our building."

"Wait…wait…wait…back-up." She held up her hand and tried to keep a straight face. His story was getting wilder by the minute. It had just enough truth to keep her guessing. She really appreciated the effort he was putting into it, but she wasn't going to let him get away with it. "Did this Pamela say she worked for the Bureau? 'Cause we don't have Section Chiefs. What's her last name?" Rachel waited patiently for his answer, sure he'd tip his hand, though she had to give him credit. She never realized Hood had such a creative side.

"Landsbe, or something like that. You know I'm not good with names."

"Landy?" Rachel's mouth dropped open in surprise. "Pamela Landy is Section Chief in charge of Antiterrorism for the CIA. That would be located in Virginia all right, but Langley, Virginia, not Quantico." If Hood was telling the truth and the Bourbon and Scotch club really existed, it was more powerful than anyone knew. The problem was that with a group like that, if there were rumors, there was nothing to them. It was only when there was silence that one needed to be suspicious. Jacob's story created an interesting puzzle. Was this a lie and therefore silence, or was it the truth and therefore nothing of substance?

"Pam didn't mention that. I would have remembered." He took the last bite of his veal Parmesan and pushed his plate aside.

"What about the others?" Rachel was having way too much fun with this to let it go.

"The redheaded Jenny always arrived and left with Jethro. I think his last name is Gibbs. Yeah, that's it, Jethro Gibbs." Hood thought for a moment to be sure of his facts. "I'm not sure I ever learned her full name or even what she did, for that matter. The two of them were tough to beat. But they took great joy in trouncing one another. Then of course there was McGruder's Jenny."

"Ya know, Hood, I'm off the narcotics, so you can't play with my head, though I really appreciate the entertainment during dinner." Rachel laughed. "You had me going until the very end. I even swallowed the bit about the CIA and Landy. It's Washington, stranger things have happened, but Iceman McGruder and a woman, that was just too much."

"You don't believe me?" He pushed aside the tray table that had been between them, slid a pillow under her thigh and rested her heel on his leg, as he helped massage her calf.

"Nope, you had great detail though. I particularly liked the bit about the redheaded Jenny and Jethro Gibbs. Felix must have helped you with the research. I didn't think you knew about Jennifer Shepard, Director of NCIS. Though I'm not sure what the first female director of an armed agency would say about the insinuation that she was 'dating' one of her subordinates, though there were rumors when she first took over….then they grew strangely quiet…" She ended in a slight moan as Hood's careful fingers hit a particularly tight spot on her calf, "Ooouch."

"Sorry, but you've got quite a knot back there." He supported her leg with one hand and worked on her cramped muscles with the other.

"Yeah, I noticed," she gasped and dug her fists into the mattress and tried to breathe through the pain. The entertaining story forgotten as she was reminded once again how far she had to go before she was up and around.

Rachel made a silent promise to the gods of physical therapy, as Jacob worked on her leg: if she could just keep from crying until after he left, she'd be vigilant about her stretches from here on in.


	4. Bargaining Rachel

**Disclaimer: **See Chapter 1

**Beta:** Obsidian Jade – thank you for all the help. If there are any errors still left in this chapter is because I suffer from being unable to read though any story of mine and not tweak it a bit. Since I always read before I post, there has some tweakage.

**Note: **I apologize for it taking so long to finish this chapter. When I split this section off from the last chapter, it allowed me to add a lot of material (its almost three times as long) that was going to be left out or squeezed in at a later date. I am much happier with this version and hope you enjoy it as well.

* * *

**Ch 4 – Bargaining – Rachel**

"_So, if you can escape these lands of darkness and see the lovely stars on your return, when you repeat with pleasure, 'I was there,' be sure that you remember us to men." _The Devine Comedy Of Dente Alighieri – Inferno – Canto XVI

* * *

Jacob's fingers moved further up Rachel's calf until he found the source of her pain. He dug deeply into the cramp, applying slow, intense pressure, fingers moving in a steady circle.

"Yes," she gasped. "Right…right…there…ohhhhh...yessss…" Air swished out of her lungs. She threw her head back, caught by surprise when the sharp, twisting agony in her lower leg shot off the scales and then lessened as it was massaged away to a dull, twitching ache by strong warm hands. Exhausted from her struggle, she slumped, panting, against the raised head of her bed. Her lungs had been about to burst, and she hadn't realized she'd been holding her breath.

"Sorry, that…ah…was…unexpected." Her eyes fluttered open and she noticed Hood was looking at her with an odd expression and pink tinged cheeks. "What…what?"

"Ahhh…nothing." He tried to bring himself back into the moment, but her cry was still ringing in his ears and he wondered if that was what she sounded like under more... pleasant circumstances.

"You've got that expression again, like you're thinking really hard about something, but we don't have any bad guys to catch or mysteries to solve."

"I…ah…was just wondering if you might want to revisit the idea of narcotics, at least for a few more days." It was the only thing he could think of to say that wouldn't embarrass them both, especially when she sat there looking flushed and…and…sated.

"No, no, I'm fine, really." She hesitated and took a moment to mentally acknowledge the bargain she'd struck with the physical therapy gods. They'd kept her from crying while Jacob was around, now she had to keep up her end. "My muscles aren't used to being immobilized in that brace most of the day. I've had a little trouble with cramping in my calf," she admitted, knowing she had to give him some reason or he'd go digging for information on his own. "Thanks for helping."

"My plea—your welcome," he quickly corrected and deflected the conversation away from him. "Rachel, you're pushing yourself and not taking proper precautions." He knew he sounded lame, but he was still caught up in what had happened moments earlier. When had he begun touching her? When had he begun wanting to do more than touch her? He searched deeply for the guilt he should feel and strangely there was none. That knowledge gave him a pang of anxiety that sent his mind spinning in directions he had no intentions of exploring.

"I'm not overworking. I need to push to get back on my feet. But in order to do that, I need a clear head. If this were happening in my thigh, then I'd have to stick with the stronger meds, my incision is still too sore, but it isn't, so I can deal with it," she argued, sure he was still seeing her as weak. "I'm fine." She reached for the fasteners on her brace, determined to seem competent, controlled, and on the mend.

"Have you looked in a mirror recently?" Hood's voice oozed skepticism, as he stared her down while she cinched the Velcro straps until her right leg was once again immobile.

"Yes I have!" she answered defensively, fully aware of the bruise-dark shadows under her eyes. "I have fair skin, that's all. You're just not used to seeing me without make-up," Rachel countered. She knew exactly how he looked when he hadn't shaved or slept for three days and all he'd done was shower before they met in one room or the other for a quick meal prior to heading their separate ways to get some sleep. But she conveniently chose to forget what she'd looked like sitting across the table from him, with damp, freshly washed hair and scrubbed face on those nights.

"Riiight," the word slid over his tongue, dripping sarcasm, though he didn't push the point. He wasn't convinced she was doing that well, or making the wisest decisions, but he had a more important issue to bring up and he'd learned with Rachel, it was best to choose his battles.

Ignoring his obvious doubts, she looked pointedly at his hands where one encased her ankle and the other, the arch of her foot. "You can let go now."

"I was…ah…going to try one more thing." In an attempt to look liked he'd planned it all along, he flexed her foot, gently supporting and pressing at the same time. The action stretched the back of her leg. "How's that?"

"Oh, yeah, that works." She breathed deeply as muscles from ankle to hip responded and relaxed. The movement was exactly like one of the exercises she'd been prescribed by PT, and much easier when she had help. "Ohhh..." she sighed, when he did it again. To gain maximum benefit from the stretch, she folded at the waist, until her forehead touched her knee. Rachel felt a gentle relaxing pull all the way up into her hip. It was the best her leg had felt all day.

As he flexed her foot one more time, he brushed his thumb across her brightly painted red toenails. Jacob wondered if that shadowy man from her past had liked the incongruity of tough Agent Young wearing something so blatantly feminine. Was that why she wore it or did it simply please the woman under the FBI Badge?

Still folded over her leg, Rachel looked up, straight into deep hazel eyes that were lost in thought. "Jacob, are you okay?" When he didn't respond, she reached out her arms and wrapped her hands around his. "Hey, Rachel to Planet Hood," she tried to get his attention, again.

"Yeah, yeah, sorry, what did you say?" He blinked and quickly let go of her foot giving her fingers an awkward squeeze as he pulled away.

"You kinda went MIA there for a moment." She walked her hands back up the mattress until she was sitting, leaning against her pillow. A tiny piece of her was proud she was still so agile. She hadn't been to a yoga class in ages and hadn't attended regularly since she was assigned to Hood.

"I was just…" he patted his pockets, looking for something, anything to explain his monetary loss of concentration. When his fingers brushed against soft, bumpy, plastic, he was filled with relief. "I've got these for you." He pulled out the bag containing her jewelry. "Sorry, your badge and ID are still at my sister's house with your purse. I meant to bring them, but in my rush to get out of there yesterday, I only grabbed your keys so I could get your travel case last night. I'll bring them with me tomorrow."

"Well that confirms it." She grinned and reached in to retrieve her earrings and watch from their nest of two hopelessly tangle gold chains

"What?" Jacob frowned as she put the diamonds back in her ears.

"The nurse from the Emergency Department stopped by to visit me today and she told me she'd given my valuables to my husband. My hospital ID bracelet has my own name on it, so until one of you guys fessed-up, I didn't know if I was Mrs. Lee or Mrs. Hood." From what Carl, her night nurse, had said, she was fairly certain it was Hood, but the thought gave her a funny feeling in her stomach.

"Actually, I was Mr. Young," he answered, trying not to let his voice break as he remembered standing helplessly outside the trauma room.

"You're kidding?" she giggled until she saw the distressed look on his face and realized the gravity of what he must have felt. "I'm sorry, Jacob," Rachel gasped, finally understanding what had been niggling at her since she'd learned that someone, most likely Hood, was thought to be her husband. Complete strangers had placed her in the spot that should belong solely to Maggie Hood. She read pain and sorrow in his eyes. "I don't understand why you went through the masquerade. I'd never…I mean…I'm not and would never pretend to be...I'm sorry…" She nibbled her lower lip, confused by the intense loneliness that swept over her.

"It's all right." He smiled as best he could when caught somewhere between the reality of losing Maggie and the almost of Rachel bleeding to death. "My wife never used my name. She was a mathematician and widely published in her own right before we married. It wasn't practical for her to change it." At the time it hadn't bothered him, and he wondered why all of the sudden it did.

"As to why I did it, it's simple." He shrugged and hoped she'd understand. "I never told them who I was, they just assumed. I let them, because as your spouse, I was allowed in after visiting hours and given information that they wouldn't have given to me otherwise. I didn't mean to invade your privacy. I--just—needed—to--know." Even now he didn't understand why he'd done it, and was still doing it. That morning, like the one before, he'd had no qualms about calling the nursing station for a full report on her night.

"No apology necessary." She was deeply touched by what he'd done. "I gave you my medical card for a reason." It had been after she'd been caught in a particularly nasty bomb blast. A well placed trash dumpster was all that had stood between her and a bad concussion. She'd walked away from that one, with only bruises and abrasions, but she could have ended up unconscious in a Chicago hospital. "There's a spot on the back of the card to indicate emergency contacts. I'll have your name put there, if you like. It'll give you the same rights without having to…ah…pretend."

"I'd like that." Hood couldn't verbalize what had driven him to continue the charade but he was glad he had, since according to the nursing staff, he was her sole visitor. It bothered him that none of her family was with her. Felix had explained that Rachel had specifically asked her friends and colleagues from the Bureau to wait to visit until she was better able to get around. Lee, like many others, had sent flowers but he'd also followed up with well wishes and messages brought by Hood.

Jacob thought about his medical card with Alex's name on the back and wondered if maybe that needed to be changed. "Would it be all right if I put your name on mine? If that call ever has to be made to my sister, I'd really rather it wasn't some stranger on the other end of the phone." He knew he was asking a lot, but he also knew he was about to ask even more of her.

"Ah…wouldn't Director Fuller be a better choice?" She couldn't tell him that the odds of her surviving him on the job were almost nil. If she opened _that_ can of worms it was likely he'd be telling her she was free to take another assignment - nice knowing you, Rachel.

"Frank isn't exactly her favorite person since I took this job, but she likes you." He smiled gently.

"That's nice to know, I like her too." Rachel was pleased at the compliment. She'd only met Alex Hood a few times. She'd discovered Alex was as complex, in her own way, as her brother. "If it's what you really want, then it's fine with me." She didn't consider it a lie, just another way of protecting him, even if it was his peace of mind and not his physical being.

"Okay then, I'll get the paperwork started and you do the same." Hood was relieved. His sister and his nephew where all the family he had left. The more he thought about the idea, the better he liked it. He trusted Rachel and knew that even if she were assigned to someone else's detail, she would see Alex and Owen through that difficult time.

"Felix will know who to contact to get it taken care of." She leaned forward and checked the straps on her brace. "Now, how about those last three laps you promised me?"

"Are you sure they're such a good idea?" His brow rose and he eyed the length of her leg. It was too easy to remember the pain she'd been in and he had no doubt it had been caused by her protracted exercise just before he arrived.

"A deal is a deal. I lived up to my part of the bargain. I expect you to do the same." She crossed her arms stubbornly. "Though if you don't want to join me, I can always do it on my own."

"And you would too, wouldn't you?" He wasn't pleased, but he'd promised. "All right, but before we do this, there is something I need to talk to you about."

"Yes…" She froze. The last time he'd said that he'd tried to replace her.

"As of midnight tonight, I'm officially returned to active status. I could be called away at a moment's notice." He wasn't telling her anything she didn't know. It was the life she'd lived for more than a year. "How soon do you get out of here?"

"If my physical therapy goes as well as it has so far, and I don't develop another fever, I'm outta here the day after tomorrow." She knew the doctors were watching her carefully for infection. The bolt had been in her leg for almost twenty-four hours and it had created a deep narrow wound that had needed to be opened further to be cleaned and debrided. She'd also required repair to a small vessel branching off the femoral artery. If she'd been hit a few millimeters in a different direction, she really would have bled to death, probably in less than an hour after being shot.

"You live in a two story walk-up." He nodded toward her crutches.

"I'll manage---" Rachel was determined to get out of there. She hated being in the hospital where there was someone always watching and listening. It went against all her training to allow herself to be so open and accessible.

"I'm sure you would, but I need a favor---" He interrupted, but she interrupted him in return.

"Is this another one of your bargains?" She was beginning to feel closed in and panicky. There was anger and fear just below the surface. Rachel knew she couldn't let him see the fear, so she hid behind anger.

"No," his voice was strained. He wished like hell he had someway of making her do what he wanted, but he was all out of ideas. For his own sanity, he had to know that she was getting well and making good progress. There was only one way of doing that, if he was out of town on a case.

"What are you getting at, Hood?"

"You know my sister is a glass artist?" He watched as Rachel nodded. "She has an important show coming up at the beginning of September. The woman who usually helps her out with her son had an illness in the family and will be out of town for the next few months. Alex was wondering if you'd be willing to recuperate at her house. It would be good for both of you. There would be another adult around for Owen, so she could spend the time she needs in her studio and you'd have all that space for getting back up to speed. There's a bedroom with its own full bath on the main floor so you don't have to worry about stairs."

"I love that old house of hers, but it's a good distance out. I'm going to need physical therapy and won't be driving for a while. I don't think it'll work." It was an enticing offer. She would have loved to spend the bulk of April and as much of May as possible on the shore of the Chesapeake, but regular PT was the key to getting back to her job of protecting Jacob Hood.

"Alex's closest neighbors are Eric and Mary Pressman. They're physical therapists at the Rehab Center of Maryland Shock Trauma in Baltimore. My sister talked to them about your injury and the Pressmans will see that you get daily sessions. The hours may be a bit odd, since they commute, but between the two of them, they've got you covered."

"My insurance isn't going to pay for daily in-home therapy." Rachel argued. As much as she'd like to accept Hood's offer, she wasn't sure it was the wisest thing to do.

"They said they'd take what your insurance pays and you're not to worry about it." He could see her distress and explained further. "When the Pressmans bought their house and were remodeling, my sister repaired and redid most of their leaded glass and three stained glass windows. She only charged them for the materials. They feel they owe her. This show is a big deal for Alex. It's their way of paying her back."

"You're sure it's okay with your sister?"

"Rachel, stop being so stubborn. It was her idea. She really does need another adult around. She converted the old icehouse on the edge of the property into her studio. It takes three different furnaces to blow and work glass. The area is off limits to Owen at all times. He'll be in school during the day until the beginning of June, but it's hard for her to simply drop everything at three o'clock and turn into a mom again."

As much as Jacob had wanted to ask for Alex's help, he hadn't because he knew how hectic her schedule was going to be during the summer. She was getting ready for her first major show and was the single mother of an eight-year-old boy. It had been a relief when she'd offered. "If it'll make you feel better, you can have your doctor check with the Pressmans."

"I appreciate the invitation. The days are already getting warm and it won't be long before it's hot and muggy in the city. I'll be in touch with them tomorrow and let you know for sure." She was almost positive she was going to take Alex up on her offer, unless there were problems regarding the therapy program or…or…she was able to figure out why the thought of spending time in his sister's home made her uneasy.

"That reminds me. When I saw McGruder today, he wanted me to give you this." Jacob pulled a cell phone out of his jacket pocket. "Your old one is in the evidence locker. Felix transferred all your data and I added Alex's number along with the Pressmans', so you should have everything you need."

"Thank Felix for me and the Iceman when you see him next.…" Rachel hesitated. She wasn't used to asking for help. "Ah…Hood, would you do me a favor?" She picked up the plastic bag that contained the two gold chains she'd been wearing when she was shot. "Would you take these with you…I don't know, leave them at your sister's, or whatever is easiest. They belonged to my mom and starting tomorrow I'll be going to physical therapy instead of them coming to me, so I'll be out of my room a lot. I want to be sure they're safe."

"I'll take care of them for you." He put them back into his inner breast pocket, glad to have something of her with him again.

"Now, how about those last three laps." She shifted until her legs were over the side of the bed and began working her slipper onto her left foot. Hood just sighed and handed her the crutches.

* * *

Jacob was careful to keep the pace slow and stay close to Rachel in case of mishaps. Much to her distress and his amusement, he kept his right hand an inch from her lower back, fingers brushing her shirt each time her crutches and the toes of her injured leg had to bear her weight.

"I'm not going to fall, you know." She glared at him over her shoulder. They were nearing the elevators on their last lap. Rachel ground her teeth and wondered what in the world had happened to the mildly confused scientist she was used to dealing with. This version of Jacob Hood was far too observant for her peace of mind.

"No, you are not." His reply should have reassured her, but the way he said it gave his words an entirely different meaning than hers.

"Stop right there. This isn't going to work." She halted her jerky forward motion, turned and pressed her back against the wall. Her balance was precarious, but she gripped the handholds of her crutches until her knuckles turned white to stay upright. "We're not going to work like this."

"What are you talking about, Rachel." Hood faced her, brushing his hands through her hair, pushing it off her face and tilting her chin upward.

"I was right earlier. You see me as damaged. You've been protecting me, but it's my job to protect you." She swallowed back the lump in her throat and blinked quickly to push back tears. This wasn't how it was supposed to be. She was the tough agent and he was the one in need of help.

"You're hurt, not damaged. Give yourself time--"

"But--"

"No." He stroked his thumb across her lips and earned himself a glare. "As much as you resent it, right now, it isn't your job to protect me. Felix has been my constant shadow and as of midnight Carson Dilworth officially joins the team." Jacob wasn't sure he had this part of it straight in his mind, but he was going to try and explain it anyway. "These last few days, I've been keeping a close eye on Rachel, not Special Agent Young. She can damn well take care of herself."

"But that's who I am," she protested.

"No, Rachel, you're much more than that." He studied her carefully. He could tell she was struggling with the concept.

The elevator doors opened a few feet away spilling out nurses for change of shift.

"Hey, Mr. Young, Rachel," Carl, her night nurse greeted them. He couldn't help smiling at the couple that was cuddling in the hallway. He was tempted to suggest they get a room but since he'd dreaded that very scenario and all it implied since the first night she'd been admitted, he kept his ideas to himself.

"Did you see the way he looked at us?" She watched Carl's back as he headed toward the Nurses' Station. Her lips began to twitch. "Have you been putting up with that for three nights?"

"Well there was one moment last night when I thought he was going to give me a lecture on neglect, because I hadn't been in since the morning."

"Oh, this really is too funny." She gave up the battle and giggled. "If he only knew the truth…"

"Are you sure you're off the narcotics?" Hood threaded his fingers deeper into her hair so he had a clear view of her eyes. They looked black with a tiny ring of blue around large dilated pupils.

"My last dose was at nine this morning. It was either take them or go without pain medication until they could get new orders and meds. Why do you ask?"

"You've been giggling on and off all night…it's…ah...different." He grinned as she frowned. "I hate to be the one to tell you but the drugs are still in your system." At least now he knew the cause of her mood swings all evening.

"I haven't been giggling," she denied. "That makes me sound like some ditzy blonde."

"If you say so, though I'd never call you ditzy." He ignored her argumentative glare and discreetly helped her get turned in the direction they'd been headed.

Both were relieved that the nurse had innocently broken up a conversation that was taking them places neither was ready for yet. Instead of talking, they continued on their way, arriving back in her room half an hour after they had left it. Rachel headed for her suitcase that was sitting on its side on a table.

"I never thanked you for getting this for me or for bringing dinner." She dug through neatly folded clothes. "All I asked for was the bag that I always keep half-packed, but you knew enough to add a few extras." She thought of her shampoo, lotion and flat iron that had been in her bathroom and two pairs of sleep pants and some t-shirts that had been folded in her laundry basket ready to go in either her drawers or luggage, depending on how soon they were called out of DC again. "I guess we really do live in each other's pockets when we travel." It was the only explanation she could think of for him knowing her so well.

"Your welcome. Your extra clothes were right there and I figured you'd had enough of the smell of hospitals and would want your own things." He shrugged. "And dinner, well it was my turn to buy." It had become a habit, on their first night back in DC, to stop at Cavalarie's, a small hole in the wall Italian restaurant down the block from Hood's apartment. Five nights earlier their plane had been delayed by a huge weather front that had backed up air traffic for hundreds of miles in all directions. By the time they'd landed, everything was closed. The following night had been the interrupted dinner meeting with Ray Wynne.

"Well, I appreciate all the trouble you've gone to."

"It was no trouble. I had to eat tonight too and the smell of chemicals from institutional soap gets old fast." He came up behind her and laid his hand on her shoulder, taking a moment to inhale the subtle scent of almonds that clung to her hair. It reminded him of some of life's simple pleasures: his grandmother's coffeecake, Christmas cookies, and sleeping on airplanes with Rachel Young.

"Go ahead and get changed." He nodded toward the bathroom. "Can you do it by yourself or should I ring for your nurse to help you?" He moved back to her bed making himself comfortable and it clear he wasn't taking any chances of her heading back out into the hall for more exercise.

"No, no I'll be fine." While she gathered a few items from her case, she realized he probably had a good reason to dislike the smell of hospitals. He had to associate it with cancer, death and intense loss.

* * *

After she'd exchanged shorts for clean sleep pants and her ratty yellow sweatshirt for a shirt, Jacob was conscious of how much slower she moved on her way back from the bathroom. "It's time you got some sleep." He helped her into bed and left her crutches where she could easily reach them if she needed to get up in the night.

"I will, soon, but I'm not quite ready to yet. Thanks for the very interesting story over dinner." She chuckled determined not to let it slip into the giggle that was bubbling up in her throat. "You've got quite an imagination hidden in that serious brain of yours."

She'd been extremely entertained when she'd listened to him talk about The Bourbon and Scotch Club.

"You still don't believe me." He leaned down and brushed aside a lock of blonde hair that was still damp from when she'd washed her face.

"Nope, but it was a good try."

"Well try this." He sat on the side of her bed, his hip warm against hers. "You know McGruder's wife."

"Here we go again." She rolled her eyes. Fun was fun but he was carrying it too far. "The Iceman was married to the Corp and now he's married to the EPD. You're imagining things. I'd remember if I'd met his wife."

"He may have been married to the Marines and he may have started out married to the EPD, but if that's the case, there's been a divorce, 'cause he's married to Jen now. I don't think she uses his last name at work, or I would have heard it, but she used McGruder when I met her the first time." For one quick moment he wondered why Maggie and he hadn't thought of that solution when they'd gotten married. She could have used one name professionally and another personally.

"That doesn't prove a thing." Rachel challenged.

"She works at The Hoover Building a few days a week and you know her. I've seen you talking to her, you and Felix both. The three of you had quite a long conversation by the elevators outside of McGruder's office. It was the day after we returned from Philadelphia. You remember, we'd been investigating those deaths that appeared random until we realized all the people involved had passed through the same subway station at about the same time."

"Was that the case where Felix had to use deadly force for the first time?" Rachel felt suddenly sick inside.

"Yeah."

"The woman you're talking about, is she petite, with curly dark blonde hair and grey eyes that look like they see everything?" '_Please say no, please say no_,' she silently begged.

"I don't know about the eyes, but the rest sounds like her."

"Damn, damn, that's Jennifer Kirkwood, Dr. Jennifer Kirkwood. She's a Bureau psychiatrist. She has to sign off on me before I can be certified fit for duty, once all the physical stuff is cleared away. You're telling me she's married to my boss?! Damn!"

"Ouch." Hood had never believed in talk therapy, not that he believed in pills. The secret, for him, was to get on with life no matter what.

"You're not much help!" Rachel snapped, but quickly softened. "But thanks for tonight, it was nice, up until about a minute ago." She smiled dejectedly, trying to remember if Dr. Kirkwood had been wearing a ring the day she'd introduced Felix to her.

"It was nice," he agreed. "But I could have done without finding you up and wandering the corridors all by yourself, when I first arrived."

"That's just something you're going to have to get over." Rachel wasn't going there again. Her mind was too occupied with other matters. "I know we've been out of town a lot the last year and a half, but someone should have said something. I mean, McGruder is a legend. I just don't understand how I missed that he'd married the Bureau psychiatrist. If nothing else, it's fodder for some incredible jokes, but not a peep out of anyone."

"Maybe they're simply discreet at work. Ty McGruder doesn't seem like the type to appreciate gossip." His lips twitched and his eyes sparkled, ruining his serious expression.

"No one is that discreet, unless they're dead." She giggled, quickly covering her mouth. "Sorry, I guess you were right about the narcotics."

"You need to get some sleep. I'll see you tomorrow, unless…" he didn't finish, simply squeezed her hand.

"Yeah, unless…" She nibbled on her lip, hating to let him go with the possibility that he might be heading out on a case without her. "Just in case, take care." She watched him nod in reply and leave the room.

Rachel waited five minutes to be sure he wouldn't be back and then pushed back the covers, took off her brace, and began the painful stretching exercises she'd neglected earlier in the evening. She couldn't have done them in front of him, even though she'd paid the price when her leg cramped. But this time, she had to do them. She'd made a bargain.

It took her half an hour and by the time she was done, tears ran down her face. Her reward was that her right knee was no longer stiff from being immobilized so long and her muscles were warm and supple. She put the brace back on for protection while she slept and curled her body around a mound of pillows as the tears dried. As an afterthought she reached for her new cell phone and plunked in a number. It was only a little after ten and she knew that he always stayed up to watch the eleven o'clock news. DC and Sanibel Island, Florida were in the Eastern Time Zone, so she didn't have to worry about disturbing his routine.

"Young, here," the crisp male voice answered on the third ring.

"Daddy, it's Rachel." She'd been putting off the call for as long as she could. It was better he hear from her, instead of one of his old cronies, that she'd been injured.

"Rachel, is everything all right?" They didn't talk often, especially since she'd been given what he thought of as 'the idiotic assignment of babysitting that scientist'. Jonathan Young believed the Bureau was being run by a bunch of pantywaists these days.

"I…ah…was wounded on the job. It isn't anything much, but I didn't want you hearing it from someone else. There's not a lot I can tell you, the case is classified." She sure hoped it was. The less her father knew about her involvement with Ray Wynne's professional demise, the better.

"Your protectee come out of it in one piece?"

"Yes, definitely." Rachel knew that no matter what her dad thought of Dr. Jacob Hood, to allow him to be harmed in the slightest would have been to fail. Failure was not tolerated in the Young household.

"Good, that's as it should be. Now maybe that ex-Jarhead Director Fuller brought in to run your detail will realize your worth and move you on up the ladder, or at the very least to someone more important."

"Dad, I'm not having that conversation with you but I will remind you that Director Fuller is an ex-Marine, too. I doubt he would appreciate the term 'Jarhead' anymore than I do." Rachel was beyond tired and wondered why she had bothered making the call. Father – daughter relations had never been the best, no matter how hard she tried to make up for not being the boy he'd wanted. "I expect you to treat my Detail Chief, Lt. Col. Tyler C. McGruder, Retired, with respect in all matters."

"Well in that case," he huffed. It made his stomach burn to think that Rachel was piddling away her career following after some nerd. She was good, even if she was a girl. "Is there anything you need?" He was really asking if she needed him, but wasn't capable of saying those words.

"I've got it covered, but thanks for asking." It had seemed like from the time her mother had died, when Rachel was ten years old, Jonathan had tried to teach her that needing made you weak.

"All right then, good-night, Rachel." He was relieved he could get on with his life. He'd never really understood his daughter, but he'd tried, he really had. "Glad you're okay."

"'Night, Dad." She pressed the button to end the call.

Wiping her eyes against her pillow, she lay on her side with her right leg safely in its brace and her left knee drawn up and thrown over the pillow in her arms. It was the way she'd leaned to sleep as a child. Brave children didn't sleep with teddy bears or stuffed animals. Unbeknownst to Jonathan Young, Rachel had substituted a pillow. It was something she still did when she was worried or very tired. Old habits died hard.

As she was drifting off to sleep she thought about Jacob and the strange conversation they'd been having in the hall when Carl had interrupted them. Jacob had said….she froze at the thought. She was thinking of Hood as Jacob…no wait…she thought back over the evening. She wasn't always thinking of him by is first name, just some of the time. Was he right? Had being shot cracked her in two? She'd worked so hard to be Agent Young and leave all the rest behind her. "Damn, damn," she whispered.

* * *

At 3 AM Rachel woke to gentle vibrating in her left hand. She'd fallen asleep still holding her cell. She had a text message from Jacob---no---she had a text message from Hood.

_Heading to Duluth. Felix and Dilly R with me. Call Alex._

_Take care of yourself._

_Jacob _

She stared at the words as they blurred and cleared and then blurred once again. It took her a moment to realize her eyes were filling with tears. Damn, she wanted to be on that plane with them.

She'd lost count of the late night or middle of the night flights she and Hood had taken, but it was always the same. Sleepy people with hushed voices scattered throughout the cabin. She and Jacob sitting side-by-side quietly discussing what they knew about the case. In recent months, Felix Lee had joined them in the seat across the aisle.

If their flight was long enough or their case information scant enough, she usually slept after they took off. More often than not she'd waken with her cheek pressed against the scratchy fabric of Hood's jacket. On the rare occasions they were both tired enough to sleep, she'd find his head pressed lightly against hers and his breath ruffling through her hair. It was one of the many little things between them that they chose to ignore.

"Be safe, guys," she whispered, wishing she could trade the soft cotton of her pillowcase for the English wool of a familiar sport coat. It wasn't until she was falling back to sleep that her mind cleared and she realized what she'd really meant to say. "Keep him safe and I'll give up what ever it takes," she was never sure who or what she was trying to bargain with, or even if the words were simply thoughts. All she was certain about was that they were true.


	5. Depression Interludes

**Disclaimer: **See chapter 1

**Credit: **The paraphrase of _James Bond _is taken from the book _Casino Royale_

**Note: **You can thank **Obsidian Jade** for the wonderful conversation between Jacob and Rachel at the beginning of this chapter. My original plan had been to have the last chapter end two weeks further along in the _Therapy Sessions' _time line. At her suggestion I ended chapter 4 where I did, allowing me to write this.

**Note II: **_Depression _will be three chapters, this one, one for Jacob, which only needs polishing, and then Rachel's.

**Thanks: **To everyone who is sticking with me on a story that is going longer than I had planned.

* * *

**Ch 5 – Depression – Interludes**

_And then he gathered me in both his arms and, when he had me fast against his chest, where he climbed before, climbed upward now, nor did he tire of clasping me until he brought me to the summit of the arch that crosses from the forth to the fifth rampart…From there another valley lay before me. _From The Divine Comedy Of Dante Alighieri – Inferno – Canto XIX

* * *

**April 11, 2009 – Duluth, Minnesota 12:00 AM (CDT)**

Jacob Hood woke with a start. His senses churned and he had trouble catching his breath. He pressed his right arm against his forehead and focused on the pounding in his ears as he willed his heart rate to return to normal. But nothing he did could take away the feeling of anxiety that was curled deep in his gut.

"Not again," he muttered, staring into the dark, sure he'd had another nightmare, but unable to remember any of it. One thing he'd discovered in the last two years was that all hotel and motel rooms looked alike when the lights were out. It added to his feelings of disorientation and doubt.

Without even thinking, he flipped back the covers and headed to the door that separated his room from Rachel's. He couldn't shake the sense that she was at the center of whatever he'd dreamt. Like so often in the past when she'd managed to squeak out of harm's way, he needed to simply look in on her and know she was all right.

He was halfway across the room before he remembered that Rachel was hundreds of miles away and the doors they usually kept open were locked securely on both sides. Neither he nor Carson Dilworth had any desire to spend more time together than necessary.

He contemplated cracking open the mini-bar in his room, but had no desire for the morning after hangover he was sure would be the results. Instead he sat on the side of his bed rubbing his eyes.

God, he wanted to talk to Rachel, just hear her voice and know his worries were unfounded. As he reached for his cell phone, the sensible side of him argued that he did know everything was all right. He'd been able to get through to Alex the day before, and according to her, Rachel was out of the hospital and settling comfortably into his sister's house. Though it bothered him that he and the blonde agent had been playing phone and message tag since he'd left Washington.

Jacob didn't know how long he sat with his cell gripped in his hand. It was too late to call, but one more round of tag couldn't hurt. His thumbs flew over the tiny keyboard. As the letters became words and the words a message, he felt his muscles relax. It wasn't the same as hearing her voice, but it was contact and it would have to do. "Tag, you're it," he whispered as he pressed the send button.

* * *

**April 11, 2009 - Deale, Maryland – 1:02 AM (EDT)**

Rachel shot up in bed, a hand held tightly over her mouth to keep in the screams that were bubbling up in her throat. She'd been having nightmares ever since surgery, but three nights ago, her last night in the hospital, they'd intensified. Tonight's was filled with sound, color and blood gushing everywhere.

It took her a moment to realize the noises she was hearing were real. They were the bangs and gurgles of steam as it traveled through cold pipes and radiators before it settled into a gentle warming hiss. Sounds she used to find comforting, because they reminded her of Christmas vacations spent at her grandmother's old Townhouse on Bleeker Street in New York City. But tonight, they had moved through her dreams like weapon's fire.

She was still shaking as she quickly put on a long, green, wool robe Alex had loaned her. She bent to pull on her Uggs, thankful her leg brace was a thing of the past. It had come down too low on her ankle to allow for the warm boots. She picked up her crutches, put her cell in her pocket, more out of habit than necessity, and headed toward the hall. She had to get out of the house, get away from the nightmares that were haunting her.

When Rachel opened the back door off the mudroom behind the kitchen, she was hit by cold foggy air. Without giving it a thought she reached for one of the many coats hanging on five hooks to her left. She came away with a large oversized black hoodie. Once she was sitting on the porch swing with her right leg stretched out along the slatted wooden seat, and her crutches lying on the ground, she slipped into the borrowed garment. It was old, made of sweatshirt material and felt good as she pulled it close around her to keep the damp, cold wind out.

She let the darkness and mist surround her. The foghorn in the distance mixed with slight creaking of chains from the swing, as she used her left foot to slowly send it rocking back and forth, was soothing. Maybe if she relaxed enough, she could convince herself that her terrible dreams were nothing more than that. They were wild productions born from her imagination and in each and every one of them, she had to stand by and watch Jacob Hood die because she wasn't fast enough, or strong enough, or good enough to do her job.

"Oh God," she gasped and buried her face in her hands. "From ghoulies and ghosties and long-legged beasties, and things that go bump in the night, Good Lord, deliver me," she muttered. It was a rhyme from her childhood and seemed fitting; since that was the last time she'd felt so unsure of herself or her abilities. Even then she'd wanted to prove she could do it, to be an FBI Agent, the best of the best. It had taken strength and work, but she'd done it. Now she wasn't sure what or who she was any longer. What had she really proved and who in hell cared?

Rachel jumped when her phone in her pocket pinged, signaling she had a text message.

_Finished in Duluth a few hours ago. Been called to a small town about 80 miles north of New Orleans. Leaving in the AM. At least it will be warmer there, I hope. _

_Wish we were heading home,_

_J_

Rachel's eyes darted over the message and then she quickly punched in a reply.

_U should be in bed. _

_Wish you were coming home 2. Alex and Owen miss U when Ure gone._

_R_

She hit send and whispered, "I miss you too." Though she'd never tell him that. It would only upset him. Even if it wouldn't, she'd never put it in writing in an easily extractible message sent on her FBI phone. Before she could put her cell down, it rang. Making her hand tingle.

"What are you doing up?" Jacob asked the moment Rachel answered.

"Well, hello to you too." She rested her head on her arm that was thrown alone the back of the swing, hearing his voice was like having him sitting beside her. "And besides I asked you first." It was like so many of their late night conversations when a case was finally solved and they sat with the lights dimmed, still too wired to sleep, but too exhausted to move. Her imagination was playing tricks on her because she thought she caught traces of his aftershave every time she inhaled.

"No, you didn't, you told me I should be in bed and that is exactly where I am." He readjusted his pillow until he was more comfortable. "Now, I ask again what are you doing awake at this hour?"

"Talking to you." She grinned picturing him sprawled across his bed in t-shirt and pajama bottoms or laying among messy covers, remote control in hand with some inane cartoon show on mute, sending odd reflections dancing along the walls.

"Funny," he growled. She was beginning to worry him. He knew that she had a demanding schedule and should be sleeping.

"Okay, okay, she mumbled, giving in so he wouldn't keep on pushing. "You know how it is, strange sounds in a strange house." She closed her eyes and ran her fingers slowly through her bangs.

"This from the woman who can sleep anywhere?" His brows shot up in doubt. Something was wrong he could hear it in her voice.

"Yeah, so what. I've been doing too much sleeping." She felt tears welling up and buried her face in the crook of her elbow.

"Rachel?" he pushed. Her tone had been edgy and strange the whole conversation. It added to his concern. She was too damn tough for her own good.

"Please don't ask," she whispered.

"I wouldn't have to ask, if you'd tell me." His words poured like warm honey over her frayed nerves.

Silence stretched between them while she swallowed tears that threatened to fall. "It's nothing really." She spoke slowly until her lips stopped trembling and she had control of her vocal cords. "I'm just a bit frustrated that's all." Sitting in the dark, surrounded by fog, talking to Jacob was surreal; it was as if he were very close, but at the same time, very far away. She'd have to be careful or she'd say more than she intended.

"What about?" his voice was soft and low and filled with concern.

"My progress has slowed to a crawl." Because he didn't push her, but was willing to simply listen, she relaxed her guard. "At first…at first, I was getting stronger everyday. The last time I saw you it took all I had to walk that damn hospital corridor. The next day I was steadier, faster, not breaking any land speed records, but my hands didn't shake and my good leg wasn't about to give out. I thought by now I'd at least be able to get rid of the stupid crutches."

"Do you know where you were at this time last week?" He closed his eyes as he remembered the panic he'd felt when he'd realized Rachel was missing and they'd found blood at the scene.

"Ah…it's…ah…Saturday…so…" The last week had melted together until she wasn't sure what had happened on which day. "So I guess I was in the hospital."

"It's only Saturday by about an hour in DC and less than that here. A week ago at this exact moment, you were handcuffed to a bed in a seedy motel, slowly bleeding to death." He didn't know what the hell was causing his nightmares or even what they were about, but he was damn sure that the picture of Rachel, which Sofia had emailed him, was a likely suspect and would remain so for a long time. "You've got to give your body time to recover."

"That's what Mary Pressman, one of my physical therapists says. But I made such good progress those first few days," she sniffed more in disgust than sorrow.

"Rachel, those days in the hospital were about surviving blood loss, a raging fever and five hours of surgery." He wasn't sure if anyone had bothered to explain the details to her or if she simply hadn't listened to what they were saying. "It takes time to come back from all of that, especially when you're attempting to restore full function to a leg that has a damaged _vastus lateralis_."

"Whoa, someone gave you the full run down," she groaned. Rachel knew what was under her dressing. She was going to have a scar and not simply on the skin. There was a depression where a section of dead muscle had been cleaned away. She'd been told if the damage had been greater, she would have required a muscle flap and skin graft to close the site. As it was, for an inch or so in any direction around her wound, it was numb to the touch but produced a deep aching throb at all times. No one could tell her with any certainty if that would ever improve.

"Not me, exactly, but Mr. Young had a long talk with one of your surgeons before he visited you that first morning." He wasn't about to tell her how much he'd seen before and after her surgery. It was better if she didn't know how fragile she'd been. It didn't fit with her self-image and she would hate knowing he'd witnessed it.

"Ahhh," she chuckled softly to cover the growing lump in her throat. "My ever illusive husband was at work again." Her relationship with Hood was professional but if the stories the hospital staff told were true, he'd harangued and harassed with phone calls and visits at odd hours.

"Did you ever set the record straight about that?" He asked as he turned on his side and held his phone tightly to his ear. "I meant to, but was called out of town too quickly."

"No, with HIPAA regulations as tight as they are, I didn't want to take a chance on getting anyone in trouble. Besides," she sighed. "I…ah…appreciated the concern." Something about the way Rachel said it, kept Hood from asking more questions. He knew her father was living somewhere in Florida. It had bothered him that the man hadn't made an appearance at his daughter's bedside. Wasn't the retired agent just as worried about her as Jacob was?

"Do I hear the fog horn in the background?" Hood smiled; suddenly picturing her sitting on the back porch swing in the same place he'd sat hundreds of times in his life. "You're going to freeze on that old swing."

"It relaxes me." She shivered and pulled sweatshirt material further up around her neck. "I borrowed Alex's old black hoodie. The one she keeps on a coat peg by the mudroom door. It's chilly tonight, but I'm not the one in Minnesota having to deal with wind chill factors produced by Lake Superior."

"Hence the reason I'm looking forward to southern Louisiana." He wondered if she'd been keeping tabs on them via one of the weather sites online. "Say, does that borrowed hoodie of yours happen to have _Stanford Department of Science_ written in small red letters below the left breast pocket?"

"Ahhh…yeah." She peered at the writing in the dark, noticing it for the first time. Things fell into place as she pressed her nose into the collar and inhaled. She wasn't imagining she'd smelled Jacob's aftershave she was smelling it. "Yours, right?" she hoped her question didn't sound as husky to his ears as it did to hers. "I didn't know, I just grabbed it on my way out the door."

"Feel free to use it anytime."

"Ah…okay…thanks." Her mouth was suddenly dry as she listened to him breathe on the other end of the phone. She knew she should end the conversation, but didn't want to. "It's…ah…really foggy tonight." She rolled her eyes wondering if her social skills had been a causality of the shooting or if she was simply losing her mind.

"If it weren't for the fog that house wouldn't have been built." He said the first thing that came into his head to keep on talking. His thought process was derailed. He'd kept that hoodie at his sister's for years and had worn it less than a week ago. Unable to sleep he'd showered, shaved, dressed, made coffee and headed down to the dock to watch the sun come up the morning after Rachel's surgery.

"Is this another one of your stories?" She laughed softly, thrilled that she was able to form words that made sense.

"Ah...." He shoved aside the memory of steaming coffee, a cold sunrise and fears for Rachel Young. "Ah...yes, and it's just as true as the last one I told you." He made himself sound slightly indignant as he picked up the scattered threads of what he'd been about to say and pieced them back into a coherent tale. "But I think you'll enjoy it more, because it doesn't include your boss. Ty McGruder or his wife doesn't make a single appearance.

"In that case lets hear it." She pulled her left leg up onto the swing and leaned her chin on her knee.

"Ah...my great-grandfather, I don't know how many greats back, was a privateer during the War of 1812. He would use the fog as cover as he ran the blockade along the coast. His sloop was filled with goods and booty from British ships and convoys he'd raided all over the Atlantic. He grew up sailing the Chesapeake and knew it like the back of his hand." Hood chuckled and added, "I was named after him."

"You were named after a pirate?" Rachel squinted imagining the staid scientist in high leather boots, flowing sash around his waist and a ruffled shirt opened almost to his navel as he boarded a burning enemy ship with cutlass in one hand and flintlock pistol in the other.

"Privateer, Rachel, where's your sense of patriotism. Now stop interrupting." He could almost hear her eyes roll on the other end of the phone. "Anyway, Captain Jake followed one particularly rich convoy from Bermuda that was carrying goods for London shops. It took him months and earned him a fortune. In a final skirmish, with England on the horizon, his ship, _The Storm Runner,_ was damaged and he was wounded badly. He anchored in one of the many coves that lined the coast of Cornwall and stayed there for months. While his men repaired the ship, the younger daughter of one of the local gentry nursed him back to health. When he sailed west again, his British Lady came with him. They came back to Deale and he built her that house."

"All because of the fog?"

"Yes. While Jake had been fixing his ship, recovering his health and wooing his fair-haired bride, Bonaparte had surrendered and the British were able to give their full attention to those upstart Yankees who dared fight another war with them. This time because they didn't want their sailors impressed into service for the Crown."

"Ohhh," she breathed softly and could almost see it. Jacob standing at a ship's wheel in the dark of night, with a single lantern lighting the compass, as they navigated treacherous seas. A woman in a flowing skirt that blew in the wind was pressed to his side, but every time Rachel tried to put a face to the woman, it blurred and wouldn't take shape. She'd finally discovered what Maggie Hood looked like, when she'd seen a small picture beside the piano in the library of Alex's large rambling house. But she couldn't visualize her as the wife of a pirate.

"By the time they headed home, almost the entire English fleet was in the Atlantic. It was a long and difficult trip. Captain Jake sighted the Delaware coast, the day DC was invaded and burned. The blockade they had to run that time had far more ships and better-trained men than any he'd been up against before. According to the ship's log, he waited just below the horizon until night fell and then snuck into the Chesapeake on a wisp of wind, passing a Man of War by less than twenty yards as the fog swirled around his Baltimore schooner."

"That's--" Rachel couldn't prevent a huge yawn that snuck up on her. "Sorry – that's why your sister calls you Jake?" She yawned again. "She thinks of her brother as a pirate." She chuckled softly and suppressed another yawn.

"Privateer, remember he was fighting for his country…."

"Sounds definitely black-ops to me." She stretched fighting to keep from yawning. "Not exactly a precedent for your FBI career, but close," there was laughter in her voice as her eyes closed and she imagined Hood standing in a bar, speaking with a perfect English accent, '_A dry martini in a deep champagne glass - with three measures of Gordon's_, _one of vodka, and half a measure of Kina Lillet – shaken not stirred.' _

"I'll almost buy that analogy. Though it has nothing to do with why Alex calls me Jake. That goes back to when we were kids, and is a story for another night. You need to go to bed."

"You're right." She realized how exhausted she must be if she was picturing Jacob Hood as Jack Sparrow and James Bond.

"Rachel, you still with me?"

"Umhmm," she whispered, unable to speak or think. His words made her shiver but that didn't make any sense. All she wanted was to stay just as she was. Jacob didn't even need to talk as long as she could hear him breathing on the other end of the phone.

"Rachel."

"I know," she sighed. "I'm up…sort of…but it take both hands, so I've gotta…Good night, thanks for the story." She didn't wait to see if he responded, simply ended the call and dropped her cell in her pocket before making her way shakily to her feet.

* * *

Ten minutes later Rachel was in bed, floating between awake and asleep, to the tune of a gently hissing steam radiator, when her cell rang.

"I just wanted to be sure you made it inside all right," Hood was hesitant and unsure and felt foolish, but nothing could have stopped him from making that second call.

"I'm fine…in bed. Stop worrying about me…not your job," she sighed.

"I know, but…" He shrugged, she was right. He was worrying about her, but damnit all, someone had to…He refused to finish that thought. It led to all those dark and twisty paths he'd been avoiding for months. It was easier to savor the intimate moment. They were hundreds of miles apart and he had the unexpected pleasure of listening to her on the edge of sleep. "Sleep well, Rachel," he whispered.

"Night, Jake," she barely breathed his name. His soft chuckle that tingled in her ear told her he'd heard it, as her thumb automatically depressed the 'end' button and the phone slipped from her fingers.

* * *

It wasn't until the next morning when Rachel woke up and found her cell phone half-buried under her pillow and an old black Stanford hoodie laying across the foot of her bed that she realized how inappropriate her actions had been. It wasn't simply that they worked together, but he was a widower, unable to get over the loss of his wife and she'd...well...she'd practically flirted with him the night before.

She blamed it on the fact she was preoccupied with trying to get well and promised herself that nothing like that would happen again. To be very sure that it didn't, she stopped taking his calls, letting them all go to voicemail and ignored his late night texts.

Over the next few days, their game of phone and message tag quickly degenerated into one of hide and seek.

* * *

**April 24, 2009 – Half Moon Bay, California – 8:20 AM (PDT)**

It had been a long few weeks. Made even longer by Jacob's inability to make contact with Rachel. He knew from the one time he'd been able to catch Alex awake and out of her studio that the blonde agent was getting better. But it wasn't enough. It simply wasn't enough.

"Damnit," he swore, tempted to throw his cell against the wall. Rachel's phone was going straight to voicemail, _again_ and Alex wasn't picking up either. He was on the verge of using Alex's emergency number, which was reserved for all things Owen, and answered immediately, when common sense reasserted itself. His sister was always hard to reach when she was in the middle of a project. Though he wasn't an artist, Jacob understood what it was like to be consumed by the effort of changing a thought or idea into something tangible.

Rachel was a different matter. It left him unbalanced to be unable to contact her. She'd always been easily accessible. Reminding himself that for the moment, he wasn't her job any longer and if she wanted to ignore his calls, she had every right to do so, wasn't much help. It replaced worry with irritation.

His life was in an upheaval and going down hill fast. Rachel's prediction of his relationship with Dilworth had been spot on. The man knew his job and was excellent at what he did, but his overly protective, smugly superior, prissy attitude was slowly driving Jacob crazy. The doctor had been thankful for Felix's presence. The young agent had been a buffer between the scientist and his handier and a much needed source of levity when things were at their worst.

Between little or no communication with the women in Deale and way too much communication with Dilly, Jacob was exhausted. He wasn't sleeping well, down to two hours instead of his usual four. When he did sleep, he woke panicked, sure he'd had a nightmare, but unable to remember what, if anything, he'd dreamt. It was like that night in Duluth, only magnified because there was no conversation in the dark with Rachel to help him get his bearings back.

He leaned against the door, wondering what was happening and what the hell he could do about it. Even when Maggie was still alive, he'd been self-sufficient. Now he wasn't sleeping or eating well. Work that should have fascinated him became routine and dull after a matter of hours.

They'd completed three cases since leaving Washington and were now in Half Moon Bay, just south of San Francisco. They had wrapped up late the night before. Felix was heading back to DC. Hood had some personal business he'd been putting off for too long. Unfortunately, Carson Dilworth was accompanying him to Palo Alto.

Jacob tried his sister and Rachel again, but neither woman was picking-up. "Damn voicemail anyway!" He glared, sick to death of getting recorded messages. He wanted to explain what he was doing… "Damn! I'm forty-two years old, well published, considered a leader in my field; I've even been a Nobel candidate. I don't have to ask anyone for permission to…to…damn!" he muttered as he paced. Hood couldn't understand his driving need to explain that the only reason he was going to Stanford was to resign. It was nothing personal…nothing like the last two times he'd been there.

In frustration, he gave up and angrily punched a different number into his cell, one he thought he'd never use again.

"Dr. Yang's residence," a pleasant female voice answered.

"Anna, it's Jacob Hood," he replied.

"Hi, what can I do for you?" The call caught her by surprise. She refused to hold out hope that things had changed between them since the last time she saw him.

"I'd like to see you." He wasn't sure it was the smartest idea, but he didn't know what else to do.

"Uhmmm…" She closed her eyes, blocking out feelings she knew weren't returned in kind.

"Don't worry Anna," he chuckled. "You can relax. I'm not…well..." He took a deep breath. It was his last chance to back out. Then he took a look at himself in the mirror and knew he couldn't go on like he was. For once he had to admit he needed help in this department. "You told me that if I ever needed someone to talk to, you'd be willing to listen. I need that right now. Will you help me?"

"Of course." She was determined to do the right thing this time. "Shall we schedule some phone time? It isn't optimal, but I know how busy you are."

"Actually I'll be there for the weekend. I have a meeting with The Chairman of the Science Department at four this afternoon, but other than that I'm free." He couldn't believe he was doing this. Anna Yang had been his wife's best friend, but she was also a psychiatrist.

"Are you coming back to work?" She tried to keep her voice as neutral as possible, in case his return to academic life was what he needed to discuss.

"No, I'm giving Tom my resignation," he sighed, saying it out loud for the first time.

"Ohh.... oh, well then..." She took a moment to collect her thoughts. She couldn't imagine Stanford University without him. "How about my office at nine tomorrow morning." If they hadn't attempted a date, six months earlier, and she hadn't discovered that she found the new Jacob Hood far more attractive than she did the old version, she would have simply invited him to her home, but that was no longer an option. Anna wanted to keep things structured, professional and safe for her own peace of mind.

"Good, I'll see you then."

* * *

**April 24, 2009 – Deale, Maryland – 9:50 PM (CDT)**

Felix Lee was a man on a mission when he pressed the front doorbell to Alex Hood's home. He didn't know what the hell was going on, but instinct told him he was heading in the right direction.

"I'm sorry for bothering you so late, Ms Hood." He nodded with determination when Alex answered the door. "But I gotta see Agent Young about something. It's important."

"Jake?" her voice broke and she couldn't get the question to form. Her attention was riveted on the man at the door.

"Not hurt, not even close…but…well…I'd really appreciate speaking to her."

"She's in the kitchen. I need to finish up some…work." She nodded toward the sketchpad and pencil she hadn't bothered to put down when the doorbell rang. Now that she knew her brother was safe, her thoughts were consumed with sloping shapes filled with flickering sapphire. "I'll be in my office, you go on without me." Alex pointed toward the back of the house as she called out, "Rachel, you've got company." The idea that was coming to life on the dark-haired woman's pad had pulled her away from a relaxing conversation in the kitchen. She knew if she was able to get most of it roughed-out on paper, along with careful notes, she'd be able to sleep without lighting her furnaces and spending the night changing ideas into flowing glass.

The weather was unseasonably hot and muggy for April. Rachel was sitting at the breakfast bar reading the evening paper and drinking a glass of iced tea. She turned, as adrenaline surged, making her smile and her eyes sparkle. She could only think of one person who would arrive unexpectedly and, according to her voicemail, he was extending his stay in California.

"Felix," she tipped her head to see who else was there, but he was alone. "Ah…Felix…it's great to see you." The muscles in her face froze as the big man gave her hug.

"How are you doing, Agent Young?" He looked her over and was glad to see that she had some color back. It was obvious she'd been spending time in the sun. There was a sprinkling of freckles across her nose and over her shoulders. But her eyes that had been so blue a moment earlier were cool, flat and appeared bruised from lack of sleep.

"Better, really much better." She picked up a cane that was hooked over the breakfast bar and grinned. "I traded in the crutches for this thing. But I don't think that's what you came all the way out here for, not at this hour." Rachel wanted to ask about Jacob, but didn't know how.

"No, ma'am it's not." He took the stool next to hers while she poured him a glass of iced tea from the pitcher in front of her. "Thanks," he nodded and took a swallow. "I would have called, but the way you've been screening your calls lately, I was afraid you wouldn't have answered."

"Oh." She held very still, not wanting to give anything away. "What did he say?"

"Not a thing." Felix covered her hand gently with one of his. He wanted her to know that he was worried about both of them, not just Hood. "The Doc isn't the kind of man to talk about thinks like that. But I've seen him make calls and texts and wait for answers that don't come."

"He was working. You were all working and I was here…it didn't seem right."

"I suspect he knows that, but it's been rough on him. Agent Dilworth isn't you." Lee had said all he was comfortable saying and probably a whole lot more than he should have. "Now, I gotta get home. It's late and my head is in so many different time zones I may sleep for a week.

"Thanks for the iced tea, and tell Alex I said hello. We talked at the door, but I could tell her mind was on other things." He laughed, well acquainted with a member of the Hood family who was concentrating on other matters.

"I know exactly what you mean." Pride kept Rachel sitting on her stool instead of accompanying Felix to the door. She'd rather be thought rude, than have another agent see her use a cane. Her physical therapy had been particularly strenuous that afternoon and she doubted her right leg would hold her weight unaided.

Later, she stood in her bedroom, just down the hall from the kitchen, with her left hand on the back of a chair for balance and bent her right leg at the knee until she could grasp the ankle. With her back very straight, she tipped her pelvis forward until she could feel the muscles in her thigh stretch. She repeated it over and over again, each time breathing deeply into the movement.

Tonight Rachel didn't relax as she did her exercises. Her eyes kept straying to her nightstand where her cell was charging and the two gold chains that had belonged to her mother lay neatly beside it. They had been sitting there when she arrived, along with her purse, badge and ID.

Before she could change her mind, she reached for her cell and punched in a message.

_Hi, are you up?_

_R._

She slid into bed while she waited, unsure if she wanted him to answer or not. When her cell pinged her stomach jumped.

_Yes, Call me if you want to talk._

_J._

She froze for a moment. Did she want to talk to him? What could she say? "Damn," she muttered as she put the call through. None of that mattered. She needed to hear his…

"Well, hello, Agent Young," his voice was warm, rough sandpaper in her ear.

"Dr. Hood, it's good to hear from you."

"You would have heard from me sooner, if you had bothered to return my calls." He wasn't accusing her, but he wasn't about to play games either.

"I…was…ah…busy and so were you. With the time difference, it was hard…and…ah…"

"…You wanted to be here and had to stay behind," he finished the sentence for her.

"Yeah," Rachel gulped. He knew her too damn well. "But wow, three cases in a little over two weeks, that's got to be some kind of a record." She fought to keep it light.

"Not really, one of them should have been handled online or by phone, but Dilly insisted we go. Have you ever been to Bismarck, North Dakota in April?"

"Can't say that I have." She laughed.

"If you do, plan on anything from snow and sleet to sunny weather." It felt so good to hear her laugh. "What are you doing still up?" As much as he wanted to talk to her, it was nine o'clock in California and that made it midnight on the east coast.

"I guess I lived on Hood Mean Time for too long." It was how they'd existed on cases. Jacob's internal clock dictated their lives. She was the one who had to keep them on schedule when local time zones conflicted. There had been a time or two when Rachel had simply ordered him to his room because she was desperate for sleep, but the longer they worked together the easier it became. She was never sure if it was because she grew used to his circadian rhythm or if he was simply aware of her needs and respected them. She had an idea that it was a bit of both.

"You never really converted," he teased.

"Speaking of which, I should probably get some sleep." It wasn't what she wanted to say. She wanted to ask him to tell her a story, but she didn't. To show how adult she was and that she didn't care in the least what he did with his life when he wasn't on FBI business, she added, "You have a nice weekend."

"Ah…thanks, you too." He wasn't sure where that came from. If he followed through on his plans, he didn't think there was going to be anything pleasant about it.

Rachel fell asleep that night trying to convince herself of what a perfect couple Hood and his dog sitter made. Two perfect college professors who had kissed goodnight in the doorway while Rachel had watched from her place as chauffeur of the car.

"It doesn't matter, it doesn't matter, it doesn't matter," she whispered over and over again until she finally fell asleep and dreamt of Pirate Jake running the blockade with a small slim blonde woman at his side. While he manned the wheel, she stood with her shoulder pressed against his arm, a flintlock pistol in each hand.


	6. Depression Jacob

**Disclaimer: **See Chapter 1

**Rating: **PG-13

**Credits: **The song mentioned toward the end is _Bleecker Street_ from Simon and Garfunkel's first album.

**Credits II: **The name Nicky Parsons belongs to whoever owns the _Jason Bourne_ franchise. In my back-story for Rachel, she and Nicky are friends from childhood. This is not a crossover. There are no further plans for her appearance.

**Note: **To all those worried about Anna's presence in this chapter it is a nonissue. _Therapy Sessions_ is a Jacob/Rachel romance.

**Note II: **This chapter has a lot of Hood's history in it. All the information about brain tumors in general and glioblastoma mutiformes in particular is taken from The American Cancer Society website.

**History: **Ruby Ridge took place in 1992; the Waco Siege in 1993 and the Oklahoma City bombing on April 19, 1995.

* * *

**Ch 6 – Depression – Jacob**

…

_Five times the light beneath the moon had been rekindled, and, as many time, was spent, since that hard passage faced our first attempt, when there before us rose a mountain, dark because of distance, and it seemed to me the highest mountain I had ever seen._ - From The Divine Comedy Of Dante Alighieri – Inferno – Canto XXVI

* * *

**April 25, 2009 (Sat.) – Deale, Maryland – 6:28 AM (CDT)**

Alex followed the scent of freshly made coffee into the kitchen. It was the only thing other than her son that could have stopped her from heading straight to her workshop. She had dreamt of clear shimmering glass crying deep blue tears and her hands itched to bring it to life.

After filling her mug with French roast, she detoured down the short hall that led to the downstairs bedroom. She had to make sure Owen was taken care of before she lost herself in the heat and magic that was calling to her.

"Rachel, are you awake?"

"Yes, in here." She answered from the small bathroom off her room. "I was taking care of some things." The blonde flushed as she carefully placed a wet burgundy bra on a hanger with it's matching panties and then hung the set on the shower curtain rod to join three others, all in different colors and styles.

"Very nice," Alex muttered. The thought that Rachel's very feminism lingerie didn't fit with the image of an FBI agent only skimmed her mind. She was too focused on keeping her love for her son separated from her longings as an artist. "I wanted to be sure you were all right getting Owen off to his sleepover. His duffle and sleeping bag are in the hall. The Martins will be picking him up at about ten. Their number is on the fridge along with all the others…"

"I've got it covered, don't worry about us." Rachel recognized the expression on the older woman's face.

"I need to...ah..." She pointed vaguely toward the yard.

"We'll be fine," a surge of happiness caused laughter to bubble up in the blonde's throat, making her feel good and alive for the first time in a long while. "It seems as if you have your own personal Planet Hood, too." She chuckled. "Go before you burst." The confused, contemplative, faraway expression on Alex's face was identical to Jacob's when he was deep in thought.

"Yeah...yeah, okay." The artist froze, caught by the sparkle in Rachel's eyes. It was the exact color she'd been trying to capture, except this time it was filled with pleasure instead of regret. "I...ah...can't promise when..." Her mind spun as it was lost in ideas for a second piece, a mate to the first. The night before, as she worked in her study, she'd dubbed the original piece _Sorrow. _It was only now she realized why. She'd gotten the idea as she'd seen deep blue eyes fill with doubt and then tears that were blinked away as the agent had turned off her phone to ignore a text message. Now, at the mention of Planet Hood, those same eyes were filled with joy. To name the pieces after the emotions they represented was too commonplace. She'd have to see what came to her as she worked.

"Just go, your mind is already there," Rachel sighed as Alex hurried toward the backdoor, leaving the younger woman alone with her thoughts. The exchange had felt familiar and comfortable, like dealing with...Jak-- "Like dealing with Hood," she whispered, looking at her reflection in the mirror. "Hood," she repeated. "Not Jacob and definitely not Jake."

With quiet determination she finished her hand laundry before she dressed to get breakfast ready for Owen. She refused to feel anything. Hood was her assignment and sort of her...ah...friend, but that was all. I've been sick and not myself lately; otherwise I wouldn't be having these odd feelings. Damn him anyway for playing hero and making me think I feel all squishy and girly inside. 'Cause I don't, I really don't.

* * *

**April 25, 2009 (Sat.) - Stanford University, Palo Alto, California – 9 AM (PDT)**

"It's good to see you, Jacob?" Dr. Anna Yang smiled, shaking hands with him as she would any other patient at the beginning of a session.

"You too, Anna." He looked around her office, as if he weren't sure what he was doing there. The walls were light blue, soothing and cool to the eye. Tastefully hung art consisted of large black and white photographs. All of them used shadows and light to form complex, yet relaxing patterns. He particularly liked the one of raindrops running down a window. It didn't take him long to realize that each and every thing in the room had a carefully chosen purpose, but instead of feeling manipulated, he felt relieved.

"Will your man in the waiting room be all right?" She asked, as she watched Hood study her office. "We may be a while. That coffee shop by the hospital is still there. They serve real food, even on Saturdays and their Internet access is high speed nowadays." She couldn't picture the somber man dressed in a black suit and carrying a trench coat exploring any of the shops Palo Alto had to offer, as the blonde female agent had done after dropping Jacob off at the dog park when he'd visited in late fall.

"I've already tried, in fact I suggested he stay at the hotel, but he insisted on coming. You're lucky he didn't search you for a weapon, before he left us alone in here." Hood was tired of dealing with Carson Dilworth. "Where do you want me to sit?"

"Anywhere you like." Anna's hand swept the friendly room. Comfortable stuffed chairs in muted blues and greens were carefully situated so that they could be easily grouped in twos, threes, or more, depending on need. Everything was placed so it was functional but still maintained a quiet, relaxed, intimate atmosphere in an otherwise professional office.

"It's not test, Jacob." She smiled, watching his eyes move from chair to chair. "You really can sit anywhere you like." To make things easier, she pointedly took a seat behind her desk. It was a calculated move to enhance the boundaries between doctor and patient, something she didn't usually do. But Hood wasn't her usual patient. It wasn't simply that he had been her best friend's husband. It wasn't even their attempted date. It was the awkward kiss at her door, which had been all her fault. She'd known he was leaning in to give her a friendly peck on the cheek. He'd done it before and it had meant nothing. But that time she'd deliberately turned her face so he caught her full on the lips. She had been attracted to him and had taken one last foolish chance. It had been a mistake that might still cost her a friendship she valued.

"Ah…I told you Cal Rigdon died?" Jacob asked, anxious to keep control of the conversation as he settled in a club chair across from her.

"Yes, you did, when we were walking Tanner, last fall." She waited wondering why he brought up Cal's death again.

"Hmmm, that's right I did." Right up until the moment he'd spoken with Anna, on that warm November day, he'd resented that the CDC or FBI, or whoever had been in charge of the disaster in Pittsburgh had classified it top secret. "You two were a couple for so long. I wanted to be sure you knew."

"I guess we weren't as much of a couple as I thought we were. In all the time we lived together, he never told me he had heart disease. It caught me by surprised, but in a way I was relieved." Anna watched Jacob carefully for signs that he wasn't simply talking about an old friend's unexpected heart attack. Another death so soon after Maggie's was bound to be a blow. "I know Calvert was always careful, but he was consumed with his work. I worried that one day he'd lose control of one of the viruses in his lab, or worse yet, in the field and it would kill him."

Hood realized she had understood Rigdon far better than anyone else. The virologist hadn't died of a coronary following years of fictitious heart disease, but smallpox that he'd genetically altered and carelessly stored. The accident was far worse than Yang had feared, because it had cost twenty-four lives…Rachel could have been number twenty-five if things had gone differently… Jacob shoved that thought back into the deep recesses of his mind, into the place where he'd been sending all unexpected thoughts of her during the last few weeks. But he couldn't suppress the shiver that hit him when he remembered her exhausted and frightened, separated from him by thick plastic isolation drapes.

"Is it too cold for you in here?" Anna didn't miss a thing. "I can turn down the air conditioner a bit."

"No…ah…no…I'm fine."

Silence stretched between them until she decided to start with something simple. They could always return to the subject of Cal Rigdon if it seemed relevant to Jacob's situation. "How did your meeting go with the Chair of the Science Department?"

"About as expected." Hood smiled at Tom Burton's predictability. "He tried to get me to sign off on my share of the last patent I worked on, the one DuPont is marketing in the fall. I refused. New separation papers are being drawn up. I told him to send them directly to my attorney. It may take a bit of horse-trading, but I think I'll be off Stanford's roster fairly soon."

"What kind of horse trading?" She knew all employees at the large teaching institution signed over the majority of rights to anything invented or discovered while working there. It was part of the conditions of their employment. It didn't matter if you were a PhD, MD or simply swept the floors, the University owned the rights to your intellectual property.

"Nothing too much." He shrugged. "Burton said he wanted me as a guest lecturer for some of the graduate seminars, but I think he was more interested in keeping my name attached to the Biophysics Department for fundraising purposes."

"How do you feel about the change you're making in your life?"

"You make it sound as if this is something I'm doing on the spur of the moment." Hood dodged the question. "I haven't been inside a class room or a dedicated research lab since Maggie…ah…well since she got sick." He cleared his throat and gripped the padded arms of his chair. "I still own my house here. Hell, I waited until I'd been working out of DC for six months to even rent it out. I was careful, and took my time. It was bad enough losing my wife, I didn't want to make any sudden decisions, until I was sure my head was screwed on straight."

"You appear to have thought it out carefully." When he'd first moved to Washington Anna had believed he used distance as a defense mechanism against facing the truth. From thousands of miles away it would be like Maggie was alive and working on the west coast, while he was simply out of town offering his special brand of scientific expertise to the FBI. He and Maggie had traveled separately often enough that it was an easy trap to fall into. "But you didn't really answer my question. How do you feel about these changes?"

"I _feel _that it is time I made a decision." He glared at her. Ideas were easy to talk about, but emotions weren't anyone's business. "I'm still thinking and doing, that hasn't stopped just because I'm not teaching anymore. I get more satisfaction out of my job with the FBI than I ever did in a classroom or mentoring a graduation student through his or her thesis or dissertation." He shrugged knowing he still hadn't told her what she wanted to hear. "My apartment in DC is only a place were I sleep occasionally, but the old house our grandmother left to Alex and me is what I think of as home. And if I change my mind again, I'm sure there is some University somewhere that would be willing to hire me. _That—is—what—I--feel_." He spit out the last four words to give them emphasis.

"You could probably write your own ticket at any teaching institution in the country. The work you've been doing makes you an even greater asset." She watched him closely. Didn't he realize how different he was? It wasn't simply about relocation or taking a new job. He was as intelligent as ever, but it was as if the boundaries of his world had been flung wide open. Where before he'd been simply a genius among geniuses in the closed off community of academics, now he was a compelling man as well. It was what she had suddenly found attractive about him when he'd visited after Thanksgiving. "What does all this change mean to you the man?"

"I've already told you." Jacob rested his elbows on the arms of his chair and steepled his fingers in front of his face, carefully watching the woman across from him. "Frank Fuller has been trying from the beginning to get me to take a permanent staff position with the Bureau. I've accepted, but it can't be official until I am no longer employed by Stanford." He couldn't let go of the idea that if he'd been a Support Professional, instead of an Independent Contractor, it would have been harder for Ray Wynne to sway opinion against him. The necessity to work alone had cost time and could have cost Rachel her life. He wasn't ever going to take that chance again. He wouldn't be an agent, but he would be one of them. "Also, the young couple who have been renting my house in Atherton want to buy it. It's theirs if they meet my asking price."

Yang knew he was being deliberately obtuse and wasn't about to let him get away with it. "You've told me what's going on externally – intellectually, but what does it mean to you emotionally?"

"Dammit, Anna, I didn't come here to be analyzed!" Hood leaned toward her and glared.

"Then why did you come?" she urged. "What has changed since you basically told me to take my psychiatric degree and leave you alone to deal with your grief?"

"I don't know." His answer caught him by surprise. "I just don't know."

"Then tell me what you do know. What prompted you to make the call yesterday morning? You said you needed to talk." She shrugged, pulling back on her line of questioning, giving him some space and a feel of control. "I'm here to listen."

"I…ah…haven't been sleeping well." He stood and walked slowly to look out the large window overlooking the wooded campus. "I fall asleep just fine, but keep waking up…and I feel…I feel…strange."

"Strange, how?" she prodded.

"Like I've woken in the middle of a nightmare, but can't remember what it is or even if I've dreamed." He shook his head unable to believe he was telling her this.

"How long has this been going on?" She needed a bit of history before she went further.

"I'm not sure when it began." He knew he had experienced it the night Cal Rigdon died, but didn't think that was the first time.

"How often do you dream, Jacob?"

"I understand the mechanics of sleep, so I'd have to say, a number of times a night, but I doubt I remember them any more often than the next person." He turned toward her desk, with his hands in his pockets, unsure what she was getting at. "The nightmares, if that's what they are, have increased dramatically over the last two or three weeks. I'd blame them on Dilworth out there." He nodded toward the waiting room door. "But I was having them before he came on board."

"Does this night time anxiety go back as far as Maggie's death?"

"No! Damnit all, how many times do I have to tell you this isn't about my wife?" Jacob tried with all he had to hold onto his temper, but it slipped the leash and everything came pouring out, leaving him angry and exhausted. "You think that because I didn't broadcast it, I didn't grieve. Well I grieved plenty." He raised his hand to tick off the stages of grief. "Denial, well I lived there even before she was diagnosed. When she started to have nausea and headaches in the mornings that would disappear by midday...I thought...I...hoped...we thought she might be pregnant. But the tests all came back negative."

"Jacob, I didn't know, I'm sorry." She kept her voice as even as possible. He needed to talk more than he needed compassion, but this was her best friend they were speaking about and it was hard.

He held up his hand as if it would protect him from words too painful to hear. "Mags thought she needed new reading glasses." He laughed bitterly. "She had her first seizure the morning she was to see the ophthalmologist. Then the denial really began. I sent her slides and scans to every center that was doing research on any kind of primary brain tumor, not just glioblastoma mutiformes. I couldn't believe that my wife was going to die. The gods of science that I'd worshiped for so long were going to save her, all I had to do was get their attention---"

"Jacob---" she tried to rein him in, keep him focused.

"No, Anna, you wanted to hear about this, so you can damn well listen." He glared. "Then came the anger, right on schedule. It burned straight through me each time I was told the same thing. Her tumor was an unusually aggressive stage IV. It had infiltrated deep into both frontal lobes before we knew anything was wrong. I thought finding her at the bottom of the steps in convulsions was bad." He shook his head wishing it had been as simple as that. "Hell, they even found cancer cells in her spinal fluid. The damn thing was deep enough to line the walls of the ventricles of her brain. All they could do was debulk the tumor. Her surgery was palliative at best - no other options, period.

"One man, Dr. Matthew Kaplan, was willing to admit Maggie into a study of a new form of chemotherapy that was supposed to eat away at the blood supply of the tumor, but hers was so deeply embedded, it did as much damage as good."

"Was that what she was taking toward the end?" Yang remembered her friend exhausted, incoherent, a shadow of her former self.

"Yeah, there are times I've wonder if it wouldn't have been easier on her...kinder...less selfish to have let her give up. She lived six months instead of the three they had predicted when she was diagnosed." He was seeing it all again, the encroaching specter of death as it stood over Maggie's bed. It was no wonder he'd recognized It so easily when It had brushed through the old diner and hid in the corner watching Rachel bleed.

"Here, drink this." Yang handed him a bottle of water from a refrigerator under a small sink in the corner of the room, before moving back to her desk, but instead of sitting behind it, she leaned against it, with her arms crossed.

"Bargaining comes next, doesn't it?" He shot Anna a shrewd look, knowing very well it did. She slowly nodded and watched him take a deep drink of water. She could almost see his mind working as it peeled down through layers of old memories. "I made every mental deal I could think of: save her and take me instead; take away her pain and give it to me; until finally," he sighed, rolling the cold bottle between his palms. "Finally, I just wanted her damn intractable pain to leave her in peace." He gasped and threw back his head, as once again, he was hit with the realization that he'd been willing to trade his wife's life so she wouldn't hurt anymore. "It wasn't long after that…well…that she died and I…I…didn't speak for three months…I'd call that depression, wouldn't you? Cause it sure felt like it from where I was living."

"Jacob, look at me!" Anna demanded as she moved quickly to his side and gripped him by the shoulders. "You didn't cause Maggie's death and you couldn't have prevented it. There isn't a bargain you could have made or a thing you could have done that would have kept her alive. Now listen and understand what I'm saying. Your wife was handed a death sentence the second the DNA in one brain cell changed and began to wildly replicate in its new form."

"I know that," he sighed and slumped against the wall.

"Do you really, Jacob?" Anna's hands shook with the need to hold him, to give them both tactile comfort. To do so would be selfish. It would satisfy her needs, instead of letting him find his own way.

"Yeah, I do." He nodded, lost in thought. "Why do you ask?"

"You were hit with a lot over a very short period of time. Usually when a person learns a loved one is terminal, they go through anticipatory grief. In your case you weren't given time to process much before she was terribly ill and then dead."

"You're not telling me something I don't already know." He looked at her wondering where she was going with her line of thought. Had his wife confided in her best friend about her marriage? He certainly hadn't told anyone, not even his sister. It had taken a brain tumor to make Jacob and Maggie realizes what they were about to lose and change their casual empty lifestyle into a strong caring relationship. Those days after Mags had been diagnosed and they fought the tumor together had brought them closer together than they had been in years.

He'd mourned her loss before she died, as the malignant cells ate deeper; seizures and pain were joined by personality changes and memory losses. The brilliant mathematician, known to the world as Margaret M. Cain, disappeared and became simply his wife. Jacob's heart hurt when he thought about all the time they'd wasted.

In reality, he'd lost her three times; the first when they'd slowly drifted apart. She to the unsolved mathematical puzzles Paul Erdos left the world when he'd died; Hood in pursuit of dark matter. The second was when her disease progressed to the point that her short-term memory disappeared and her personality changed; and then finally when she died.

"You've covered all the steps of grief except one: the last, acceptance." Anna could tell he was exhausted but if she let up on him now, he might never finish what was started with a phone call yesterday.

"Acceptance," his laugh was hard and rough, a parody of humor. "I've accepted that she's dead. I know I'll never hear her laugh again, or watch her play with Tanner, or find strange scribbles of equations on cereal boxes or on the morning newspaper; but I'll never accept that it had to happen, especially the way it did. She was so bright and had so much potential...to have her brain simply eaten away like that..." He moved back to his chair, leaned his elbows on his knees and rested his head in his hands, his eyes closed. "It was her strength and it was stolen from her long before her body died." He'd gladly go back to his safe marriage, as quiet and unexciting as it had been, if it could undo all the damage that had been done.

He shuddered as he fought guilt and panic. "And I can't accept that I might have to lose like that again," the words were forced out from somewhere deep inside of him…the place where he hid all his fears, pain and terrible worries that it was already far too late. That he was on a collision course with loss either by separation or death.

Anna was suddenly alert and very quiet as she studied Jacob Hood fighting a memory. She looked at him carefully, wondering if he realized he'd spoken out loud.

"...She's usually so strong, but she could hardly sit up and I had to keep talking to her, reminding her to stay awake. There was blood everywhere. She looked at me and told me not to worry. She said it wasn't my fault if it..." though he was almost whispering, his voice broke and he had to swallow to go on. "She said that it wasn't my fault if it didn't work out, because I can't fix everything." He shuddered and shook his head, trying to get free of whatever was haunting him, finally turning toward Anna, lost and unsure. "But what she was really saying was that it wasn't my fault that I didn't find her sooner," his words were rough and angry and filled with pain.

"I had to be a damn bystander while Maggie's mind, her strength, was eaten away and then...then again when Rachel grew weaker by the second and almost bled out." His voice cracked. "I can't do it...I can't be helpless like that ever again!"

"Jacob," Yang spoke softly and gently touched his shoulder. "Who are you talking about?"

"Rachel Young," he whispered her name.

"I remember her." And she did remember, especially the first time. Rachel had interrupted the walk Anna and Jacob had been taking with Tanner at the dog park. It was business, but it had been the blonde agent who had called Hood away from her side. What Yang recalled with greatest clarity was Jacob looking toward the black car, nodding and telling her that was how he dealt with his grief. At the time Anna had thought he'd meant his job, but now she wasn't sure.

"Where is Agent Young now?"

"Ah...ah...in Maryland with my sister, Alex, recuperating from being shot. It took me almost twenty-four hours to get her back. I was terrified I'd find her too late."

"How long ago did that happen?" Anna fought to maintain a professional bearing. She was determined to help Jacob. She'd already taken advantage of him enough in the guise of trying to help.

"Almost three weeks ago, but it seems like a lifetime since I've been stuck with that jerk Dilworth." Hood snorted and dismissed the man from his mind.

"Ahh, this happened about the time your sleep issues intensified?" It was clear what was going on, though Yang wondered if he realized it.

"Yes, but that can't be the cause. I got her back and she survived." Hazel eyes sparked with emotion. "She had a hard time of it and will need physical therapy but she's safe now."

"You care for her deeply, don't you?" The question was asked badly and Anna knew it, but it simply slipped out.

"Yes...but not like you're implying," he denied, uncomfortable with the question. "Our relationship is strictly professional."

"I'm sure it is." She was on steadier ground. For one moment she'd been thinking like a woman instead of a doctor. "But what are your feelings toward her?"

"She's my bodyguard and handler just like Carson Dilworth, out there."

"She's hardly like Agent Dilworth." Yang was aware he'd dodged her question but let it go for the moment.

"Well there are obvious differences," Jacob admitted with a small grin.

"I'm not talking about the obvious." She was suddenly extremely serious. "Moments ago you were speaking about your acceptance of Maggie's death. The way you feel about it is normal. It's not the loss one accepts, but the fact that a loved one is gone. You appear to have done that, but you followed it up with the statement that you couldn't accept having to go through it a second time." She stopped speaking for a moment and simply watched him. "That indicates very strong feelings."

"It's complicated." He hoped she wouldn't pry further. He'd been avoiding that thought for weeks, even months, if he were honest with himself.

"I'm sure it is, you're a complicated man, Jacob, but you need to put a name to those feelings," she stressed.

"This is ridiculous. Maggie was...is my wife," he sputtered. "She was comfortable and soothing to be around. She never came home from work with a black eye from a fistfight, or bruises and contusions from a bomb going off as she entered a building. She was never in gun battles or made me wait in the car, or stay behind her while she took care of anything dangerous. Mags let me drive; in fact, she thought I was a damn good driver. I knew exactly what to expect, no wild games of chicken in speeding cars; no arguments, or target practice…or…or…" His head was filled with a kaleidoscope of danger that Rachel had faced and he could hear her whispering sleepily, '_Night, Jake.'_

"It sounds like this isn't the first time Agent Young has been hurt on the job."

"Let's just say she knows how to make good use of an icepack." He recalled her doing paperwork with one pressed against her eye in Chicago; there was dinner in Texas as she iced her cheek; and he'd helped her keep one against the back of her shoulder in California. He didn't even want to think about how she'd looked after surgery in Maryland. Not all the ice in the world would have helped her then.

Anna remembered something Jacob had said when he'd first told her he was having trouble sleeping. "You mentioned that your nightmares had been happening for months. Was Agent Young injured just prior to any of your other bad nights?"

"Anna, no..." Jacob gasped; feeling as if she'd just ripped the scab off a nasty wound. He could see himself standing in Rachel's doorway, watching her sleep to calm his fears. Was it possible that he'd gone to bed still worrying about her? The only other time he could say for sure that he'd had problems, was the night Cal Rigdon had died. It had been the first time he'd tried to sleep after he'd defied Rachel and the odds to prove she didn't have small pox. "Well...ah...maybe...but that doesn't mean a thing...Damnit, I love Maggie."

"A part of you always will but that doesn't mean you aren't allowed get on with your life. You're doing it professionally, why not personally?"

"I'm not ready." He didn't want to listen anymore, but couldn't stop picking at it. Anna's questions had awakened his curiosity. "Besides, it isn't the same. The women aren't the same, nor are the feelings."

"Jacob what you had with Mags was unique because you were married to her and her love of mathematics just like she married you and your love of science." There was so much she wanted to tell him but couldn't because she was acting as his therapist. He needed to find his own way. All she could do was guide him.

"You make it sound as if we had…had…lovers…" he stuttered, not liking the analogy.

"In some ways you both did."

"No…she never would have and I didn't… still haven't." His stomach tightened as he remembered massaging Rachel's calf until she moaned. He'd wanted…no he refused to think about it.

"Not in the sense that is commonly thought of when one says lovers, but your passions were split." Anna smiled gently. "It worked for both of you and that's what's important. But you have to keep in mind that you've changed and from what I've learned today, you've moved on. I don't know what your feelings are for Rachel Young, but I do know that she isn't simply your bodyguard and handler."

"If she'd died three weeks ago, I would have found it very hard to deal with." He looked off into the distance, knowing he'd said the same thing to her. "The words seem inadequate, but I...just...can't..."

"It's all right, Jacob, give yourself time." Anna walked slowly back to her seat behind her desk. She needed to put space between them.

"It's not all right. I said the same thing to her, and then suggested that she transfer off my detail." He sighed and went on, "I'm still not sure that wouldn't be for the best."

"The best for whom?" Yang challenged.

"It would keep her alive." Hood's eyes were stormy with pain.

"Would it? I thought you told me she was a bodyguard for the FBI. Is being assigned to you really so much more dangerous than it would be if she was assigned to someone else?"

"Thanks for adding a whole new variable to the equation." He glared at her.

"You're welcome, it's all part of the service to ask questions and make you look at things from all angles." She leaned back in her chair and smiled. "Now tell me about Rachel."

"What do you want to know?"

"Jacob," the psychiatrist rolled her eyes at him. "This isn't about what I want, but what you want and need. Now start talking, anything that comes to mind."

He concentrated for a moment and then the words spilled out. "She's…ah…about twelve years younger than I am…unusually smart, not Maggie smart, but then who is?" He dug through another layer. "I've know from the moment I saw her she was pretty…got a hell of a tempter too." He smiled as he remembered more than one argument. "She can be tough as nails or..." he closed his eyes remembering her clinging to him in the hospital. "Or she can be soft and sweet." He cleared his throat refusing to take that any further. "And…and…and…when I'm with her I don't…ah…feel alone…anymore…" his voice broke. He could almost hear himself telling her that, but knew he hadn't.

Anna leaned on her desk, suddenly extremely tired. "In my professional opinion," her voice hitched and she gripped her emotions, refusing to give the woman inside of her any freedom. "You need to give yourself time and Rachel, too. She almost died. The agent I met six months ago didn't know the meaning of death. She has to be dealing with some tough emotions right now."

"She is." He'd seen them at work, but wasn't about to share them with anyone. "I've ah...discovered that just recently I find her...ah...attractive in ways that I shouldn't. What if it's just proximity, timing and availability?" He'd spent more time with Rachel in the last eighteen months than he'd spent with any one woman in his adult life. There'd never been a two-year period when either he or Maggie hadn't been gone for long chunks of time.

"There is that possibility, but you've never been one to be easily distracted, even by a woman." She went back over his words from moments ago and had one other question. "Why did you say, 'you shouldn't be attracted to her'?"

"My wife is dead. I thought I'd never feel...or...or...desire another woman," he whispered. It seemed like the ultimate betrayal. Even when he and Maggie had been more like friends with benefits, than husband and wife, he'd never looked at anyone else.

"That's guilt talking and you have no reason to feel guilty." Anna was a keen observer and knew much more than Hood realized. It was wise to keep it that way, but there was one thing she could tell him. "The only doubt Maggie ever had, was that one day you might want more from her than she was able to give."

"I had no idea." There in lay the reason for his guilt, because at times he had wanted more. Now he'd been given a do-over, but the price was more than he was willing to accept. "I loved her."

"I know, Jacob, and now you have the chance to love again, don't waste it." It hurt Anna to say the words. She would have liked to be the woman in his new life. "Take it slow and easy. Don't let the past weigh you down. I don't know if Agent Young is your future, but I know you have one."

* * *

**April 25, 2009 – The Palo Alto Marriott – Palo Alto, California – 10:55 PM**

Jacob stared at the ceiling. He was exhausted but unable to sleep. His session with Anna had gone on for hours. It had sapped him of energy and done nothing to improve his mood, increase his appetite or make him feel any better. It didn't help that there had been no messages or voice mails waiting for him when he'd been able to check his cell.

"Damn that stubborn woman," he muttered as he picked up his phone and balanced the cool plastic casing in his palms. "I need some sorta sign that I'm not in this confusion alone." Frowning when the instrument didn't respond, he composed a short message.

_If you're awake call me._

_J_

He sent it off before he could second-guess himself. A moment later his cell beeped, signaling an incoming text.

_Only if you promise not to lecture me about my sleeping habits._

_R_

He laughed and his thumbs flew as he muttered, "More like her non-sleeping habits, but who am I to comment."

_Done, but no lecture from you either._

_J_

Seconds after he depressed the send button, his phone rang.

"Why would I lecture you? It's not even the eleventh hour there." Rachel snuggled deeper into her pillows.

"Point taken," he sighed. "But it certainly feels later than that."

"Are you all right?" She could hear the strain in his voice. "Didn't your dat--day go well?"

"It's been difficult and I guess I'm tired." He was weary to the bone, but wanted to hear her voice.

"Having a bit of trouble with Hood Mean Time?"

"No, more like Dilworth pain-in-the-ass all the time." Jacob grunted and was rewarded when she chuckled gently in his ear.

"When I told you, weeks ago, that Dilly was from a different era of FBI, I failed to mention that he is pre-Waco and Ruby Ridge. He lost friends and collogues in the Oklahoma City Bombing." She faltered unsure if she needed to explain further or not. "Those guys were trained under a different set of rules."

"Your dad must have been one of that group, as well."

"Oh yeah, he and Dilly worked together in Phoenix, but dad quit, took early retirement." Her laughter was forced as she gripped her cell to her ear.

"Tell me a story, Rachel, a happy one." He knew he should dig deeper. He could hear the hurt in her voice when she talked about her father, but he didn't have it in him. Too many old memories were crowded into the room with him. "I just want to listen tonight."

"Okay." It wasn't what she expected, but she didn't want to hang up either, so she'd think of something. "I spent most of my vacations with my mom's parents. They lived in New York, in a great old brownstone duplex." She closed her eyes remembering all the joyful times she'd spent there. "It's on Bleecker Street in the Village."

"Like the song?"

"Yup, Simon and Garfunkel. Their first album, I think. That song reminds me of home. When I'm down I...well I used to...never mind, it's not important."

"Is that what you dance to when you're upset?" He could see her dancing in the moonlight as clearly as if she was in the room with him.

"We may have to rethink leaving the door open between our rooms when I'm back on the job." She could feel her heart pounding in her chest. There'd only been once that she'd been unable to sleep and gotten up with her iPod. "Sorry I didn't mean to wake you."

"You didn't, I couldn't sleep either. Maybe I should have texted you, talking might have helped both of us."

"Yeah, maybe it would have." She'd been exhausted and shaky that night, thanking God and Hood's abilities that she wasn't still shivering in a plastic room while men in the cubicles around her died of small pox.

"Do you want to keep interrupting or do you want to hear my story?" She pushed past the strange feelings that rose when she realized he must have been watching as she'd danced away her stress.

"Definitely the story." He smiled sleepily.

"Okay. The summer I turned twelve, grandma got new neighbors. Nicky Parsons and her mom bought the other side of the building. Ms Parsons played the cello for the New York Philharmonic. Nicky was my age. She was a girly-girl to my tomboy but we hit it off right away. It wasn't long before we were dubbed Trouble and Trouble."

"I can imagine." Hood laughed trying to picture Rachel as a child. "What did she look like?"

"Blonde, about my size, but her eyes were dark brown. I taught her to catch a baseball and she taught me all sorts of useless girly things." She chuckled.

"Want to be more specific?" Jacob sounded drowsy but he was having too much fun to go to sleep.

"No, this is my story. I get to tell it my way." Rachel laughed. It was Nicky who had dragged her to her first manicure and pedicure. While their friends had raved over Victoria Secret, they had discovered the joys of tiny lingerie boutiques that were scattered throughout the city. The girls had worn the same size clothes all their lives and by the time Rachel would go home in the fall, their wardrobes were always intermixed. Definitely not things Hood was ever going to hear about.

"We'd go all over. Gram would have had a heart attack if she'd known some of the places we went. We were young and invincible and loved that city. I remember the first time we visited the Statue of Liberty together. We walked up all those stairs on a bright shining day and it seemed as if everything that was important to us could be seen from the windows in the crown. But I think we loved the Village the best. It was alive with music--"

Rachel's story was interrupted by a quiet sigh on the other end.

"Jake?"

"Hhhmmm," It was followed by deep even breathing

"At Christmas we'd go to Radio City Music Hall and see the Rockettes." She spoke quietly to the rhythm of his breaths. "There were roasted chestnut venders on every corner." Her words slowed and slurred as she was comforted by his sleeping presence. "Ice skating at Rockefeller Center..." She shivered at the happy memory and closed her eyes.

Soon they were both fast asleep, each with a cell phone tucked against one ear.


	7. Depression Rachel

**Disclaimer: **See Chapter 1

**Rating: **PG-13

**Credits: **The movie that Rachel and Owen and later Rachel and Jacob watch is _Time Machine_. It is the 1960 version. I own a copy of the DVD, but not the movie. I found some interesting parallels, as did Owen.

* * *

**Ch 7 – Depression – Rachel**

_And when, with this, his words were at an end, the flame departed, sorrowing and writhing and tossing its sharp horn._ - From The Divine Comedy Of Dante Alighieri – Inferno – Canto XXVII

* * *

**April 26, 2009 (Sunday) – Deale, Maryland – 6:30 AM (CDT)**

"Good morning," Alex Hood walked into the kitchen and headed straight for the coffee maker. Her hair was wet from the shower and she looked tired, but she moved with fluid grace that spoke of deep satisfaction. "Thanks for making this." She held the pot in the air and grinned at the blonde agent slumped in her seat at the breakfast bar. "I could get used to service like that."

"You're welcome...needed caffeine...now," Rachel mumbled and stretched her neck and right arm, working kinks out of stiff muscles. She'd spent the night unconsciously trying to keep her cell phone pressed against her ear as she slept. It left her feeling like she'd been tied in knots.

"Bad night?"

"Not really, I slept well for once." It was useless trying to hide her nightmares from Alex when they were living in the same house. "Just can't seem to wake up." She blinked groggily at the older woman and rested her elbows on the counter. "I'm a bit stiff, but nothing PT won't torture out of me later." She'd fallen asleep talking to Ja—Hood, listening to him breathe. She'd probably still be asleep if her cell battery hadn't died. She'd woken to an incessant beep that warned her to either turn off the device or charge it. She'd chosen the latter. "I didn't hear you come in last night, but you look very pleased with yourself. If I didn't know better, I'd think you had a hot date." She deliberately directed the conversation away from herself.

"It was hot all right," Alex laughed. "Even though my studio is well vented and the furnaces insulated, it can get up to 110℉."

"If you ever get bored, you could hold Bikram yoga classes in there."

"Yoga, hmm, somehow I pictured you more of the martial arts kinda woman." Alex put two English muffins in the toaster. Rachel hadn't been eating well and she was determined to change that.

"Bikram isn't for sissies. Ninety minutes of twenty-one poses that work core muscles and it's done in a room that is 105℉." The agent shot back and then added wistfully, "Not that I get the chance to go to classes much anymore."

"I'll bet we could find a studio around here that offers it. Once you get the okay from your doctor, let's do it." She pulled the muffins out of the toaster, buttered them and then sprinkled one with cinnamon and spread honey on the other.

"You'd really want to?" Rachel took a bite of cinnamon covered English muffin and chewed slowly. She wasn't very hungry, but she knew she had to eat.

"Sure, I'd like to try it." Alex poured them each some orange juice before moving to the other side of the breakfast bar. "The heat shouldn't be a problem since I work in high temperatures everyday. I'm fairly strong, but my agility sucks. I envy the way you're able to move, even after being shot, having surgery and spending time in the hospital."

"But I still have so far to go," her voice broke and Rachel bit her lip. It was hard, she didn't know who she was anymore. Gone was the strong FBI agent who could do anything she set her mind to. In her place was this woman who was confused and alone.

"You're doing great. Everyday you're making progress."

"Sorry, it just gets to me sometimes." She felt hollowed out and isolated, even with Jacob's sister in the same room. To hide it she straightened her back and carefully sipped her coffee. She'd remade herself before and could do it again, if necessary. "You've been wonderful to have me here. I'll never be able to thank you enough."

"Rachel, I'm the one who owes you. You could ask anything and I'd do it for you. You've had my brother's back for the last eighteen months. I know it can't have been easy. _ He_ isn't an easy man to get along with, but for some reason you stayed when all the others couldn't be bothered putting up with him. For that you're welcome here anytime, under any circumstances."

"Alex, you understand that I didn't take the bolt for him?" Rachel met hazel eyes that were very familiar but very different from the ones she was used to looking into. "He was hundreds of feet away and out of sight."

"I know, he told me." She smiled sadly. "But you did make sure he was out of danger before you went chasing that woman. You always make sure he's out of harm's way. I see you doing the same thing for Owen and by extension, me. You've got that cell phone practically glued to your hand." She nodded toward the counter where Rachel's cell was charging. "My '_Owen only'_ number hasn't rung once since you've been here. My son calls you if he needs anything and I can work and not worry about him. I know my two men are taken care of because of you."

"Ahhh...ahhh…" Rachel wasn't sure what to say. Her insides felt like they were breaking up. She wasn't used to people showing such gratitude for simply doing her job. "Ahh shucks ma'am, it's all part of the service," she tried to do her dad's John Wayne imitation, but it sounded shaky and unsure even to her ears. She took a deep breath and changed tactics. "Why don't you tell me about what you were working on last night, before I ruin my superwoman image and end up balling like a girl."

"Okay, I'm always happy to talk about my work." Alex grinned, relieved that she'd finally been able to tell the agent how much she appreciated her. "I made the most incredible piece. It's the first in a two part series. I'd show it to you but it'll be at least another day before it's done in my lehr….that's a special furnace for evenly controlled cooling," she added for Rachel's benefit. "I've got the second one all planned and the materials ready. Getting the proper mix of colors took me forever, I couldn't get it right...but finally…" She paused and shook her head. "Sorry when I get like that it's best to tune me out, but you did ask. Bottom line, I'd still be working if my hands hadn't started to shake. Adrenaline will get you just so far and then it becomes a hazard when doing detailed work, but I suspect that's true in your profession too."

"Yeah, it is…" Rachel was interrupted when her cell began vibrating on the counter. She took one look at the callback number and sent it straight to voicemail. "What you do is fascinating." She carried on as if nothing had happened. "Where do you get your ideas?"

"You know, you're going to have to talk to him sooner-or-later." Alex nodded toward the phone. "Why not make it easier on both of you and do it now." She had seen the blonde agent screening her calls all week and had been the unhappy recipient of a number of frustrated voice mails and texts from her brother. "Jacob isn't used to being unable to reach you."

"That wasn't Jake," Rachel looked deep into her coffee, unaware that she'd used the nickname that only his sister and she used. "It was my father. He likes to dispense, what he calls, pearls of wisdom after his morning run. I'm not up for his particular brand of parental advice this early in the morning."

"Ahh," the brunette slid onto a stool next to her. "So it's just your dad that you've been avoiding."

"No, yes, not exactly..."

"Rachel, you can talk to me and I won't tell anyone, not even my brother." She could see confusion and hurt in the agent's deep blue eyes. They were the exact color Alex had spent hours trying to create the night before. They were the exact color of the tears that had finally flowed as molten glass from her pipe as she blew and turned and reheated and blew again, until she'd given life to the heart of _Sorrow. _It was a magnificent piece. Crystal-clear glass, eighteen inches high with a delicate slightly curved silhouette that was feminine and yet strong. Bubbling up from the center was a well of blue the color of Rachel's eyes when she refused to let herself cry. It rose until it overflowed causing droplets to slowly slide downward, teardrops caught forever, finally allowed to fall.

"I haven't been taking his calls because there was nothing I could do while he's so far away and I'm here. I can't help him. I know you think I take care of him, but that was before." She groped for words that would make sense of why she'd been avoiding him. "Jak-Hood has to get used to working with Carson Dilworth. I'll be back, but until I learn to compensate for the nerve and muscle damage to my thigh, he isn't safe with me as his bodyguard."

"That explains your nightmares, at least some of them." Alex rested her hand gently on Rachel's shoulder.

"I don't know what you're talking about." Young stared defiantly at Hood's sister. It was one thing to have someone know her bad dreams existed but it took it to a whole new level if she was expected to discuss them.

"Sometimes at night, when I'm up late, I hear you call out his name. You're telling him to get down, or run, or get behind you." Her eyes filled with tears knowing that this slim woman would do about anything to protect Jacob.

"You don't understand," the agent gasped, unable to pretend any longer. "In those dreams I'm not fast enough, or strong enough or good enough at my job and it puts him in danger." She covered her face with her hands. "Sometimes it's more than danger, sometimes I can't even warn him in time."

"I thought as much." Alex ran her hand up and down Rachel's arm, giving the only comfort she could. "All the more reason you need to talk to him. Then you'll know he's all right and you can concentrate on getting faster, stronger and better. Besides, I don't think he's been calling his handier slash bodyguard. I think my brother has wanted to speak to his friend. That's something you are that Dilworth will never be." She challenged.

"I guess we are...kind of...friends," Rachel muttered. "He isn't as much of a pain in the ass as he used to be."

"Kinda friends?" Alex teased, wanting to lighten the mood. "You forget I saw the lingerie he packed for you. I'd say that speaks of friendship and more." She also remembered finding Jake in the downstairs bedroom, the one that had become his since they inherited the house. He'd gotten back from an exhausting day spent with the FBI Legal Department, followed by dinner at the hospital with Rachel. Instead of relaxing he was clearing out a dresser drawer and moving some personal things to the guest bedroom upstairs. Later, with a glass of scotch at his elbow, he'd carefully, _almost lovingly;_ untangling two knotted and twisted gold chains. Once he'd completed his task, he'd left the jewelry on his nightstand beside an FBI badge, ID and purse. _Oh yes, they were friends and then some._

"No, no you've got it all wrong," Rachel gasped. Horrified at what Alex was implying. "I started packing that case the first morning we returned. He didn't...oh my God...you've been thinking all this time that he...no." She could feel herself flush as she pictured Jacob's long strong fingers touching the silk and lace of her bras and panties.

"That's your story and you're sticking to it," the dark-haired woman's eyes sparkled over her coffee mug.

"Are you trying to cause trouble?"

"Nope, just trying to wake you up and get communication flowing again."

Rachel frowned. "You realize I don't do _girl talk?_" At least she didn't anymore, not since she'd been told that her best friend, Nicky Parsons, had died in a fire in Tangier, two years earlier.

"Says the woman with a fondness for lacy silk undergarments and bright toenail polish hidden under her FBI black and sensible shoes." Hood's sister was pleased with the expression on the other woman's face so she took it one step further. "It's an interesting dichotomy: tough as nails on the outside yet feminine and sexy underneath. That's got to mess with any man's mind, even one as intelligent as Jake's."

"Alex," Rachel choked on her coffee until her eyes watered. "You're way off base."

"Well, it would certainly explain why you've been dodging his calls."

"I'm not dodging his calls..._anymore_. He texted me late last night, about two, our time...wanted me to call if I was awake…" She put her mug down and turned toward Alex, suddenly needing to confide in someone. "He didn't sound good. I don't know what I expected, but I've only heard him that depressed once or twice before."

"Palo Alto has difficult memories for him."

"I realize that, but he was spending the day with Professor Yang. His text caught me by surprise, I was sure he'd be too busy to..." She shrugged, refusing to finish the thought, remembering how the couple had looked as they'd kissed, in the shadows of the front porch light while Rachel waited in the car, guarding the house where Jacob Hood had had dinner with his old friend. It had happened five months ago, but was still sharp and clear in her mind.

"Isn't she the one who is taking care of his dog?" Alex tried to recall what else she knew about the woman.

"That's the one," Rachel nodded unable to understand why the thought of Hood and Yang together was so painful, when she'd been the one to persuade Jacob to stop screening the Professor's calls and act on them. "They're...ah...friends." It was all she could say.

"Yeah, in a round about way. She was Maggie's old roommate from as far back as freshman year at Berkeley. If I remember correctly, Anna was involved with an old friend of Jake's. That's how my brother met his wife."

"Professor Yang used to date Calvert Rigdon?" Rachel shivered at memories of what had happened because of the virologist. Pittsburgh and what Rigdon had done there still had the power to give her an occasional nightmare.

"Yup, that's his name, Rigdon. Anyway, he did a great deal of traveling, though he was based out of Palo Alto because his research grant was through Stanford. When Jake first moved to California his friend was living with Yang. Maggie occupied the second bedroom in the apartment. My brother slept on their couch while he was looking for housing."

"Hood told me. He said introducing him to his wife was Cal's greatest accomplishment." Rachel pulled her robe tighter around her shoulders feeling the cold that had seeped into her bones when she stood frightened and alone in that plastic room, with men dying on either side of her.

"Are you all right?" Alex rested her hand on the other woman's wrist. For Jake to have confided in Rachel was significant. He never talked about Maggie, ever, even to her and she was his closest family.

"Yeah, yeah, I'm fine." The blonde forced a smile onto her face as she slid off the stool, gripping the counter until she was sure her leg held her weight. She'd left her cane in her bedroom. She knew she'd need it after PT, but until then she wanted to be able to get around on her own.

"Rachel, what do you know about Anna Yang and my brother that I don't?" Her question caught the FBI agent off guard. Alex was surprised to see a momentary flash of confusion and pain fill serious blue eyes. It said more than words ever could.

"I don't know anything."

"But you've met her?" Alex kept digging, knowing there was more than she was being told.

"I've met a great number people in the last year and a half--" Rachel took a deep breath and started again. "I'm sorry, I didn't mean to be rude but you have to understand that I can't talk about any of this with you. When the FBI protects someone, they guarantee him or her confidentiality. It's a huge part of building enough trust to be able to do the job effectively."

"Okay, fair enough." Alex sat back and folded her arms, studying the relieved look on Rachel's face. "But you have to understand that I don't care what you may have seen or heard. Jacob is not involved with Anna Yang."

"I never said he was." Rachel's chin rose in defiance.

"Not in so many words, no." She shook her head. "Don't let my older brother's intelligence fool you, sometimes he can be very dense." Alex didn't know what was going on in Jake's head, but it was obvious that he hadn't bothered to tell Rachel why he was in Palo Alto and she had formed some very interesting conclusions of her own, conclusions that were hurting her.

"I know all about it. It's caused by a dominant gene found on the Y chromosome." The blonde shrugged.

"That's something we can agree on." The artist slid off her stool and carried her dishes to the sink. It was clear she wasn't going to get any further with her line of questioning. "When you spoke to him last night, did Jake say when he'd be back?" Something wasn't right. Would spending time with his dog, Tanner, leave him sounding depressed? Was he second-guessing his plans to leave the University? Alex knew he had a meeting with the Chairman of the Science Department but wasn't sure when it was scheduled for. Though she'd denied it, this thing with Anna Yang bothered her. She refused to give any credence to the idea that Jacob would be seeing Anna romantically, not after how he'd reacted to Rachel almost dying. If he was finally letting himself get emotionally involved with a woman, again, it was with the small blonde who was staring sadly out the screen door.

"No and I didn't think to ask. He didn't sound good and it worried me but there wasn't much that I could do from so far away." She shrugged, unwilling to be too specific about the call.

"What would you have done if you'd been there?"

Rachel's chin tipped toward her left shoulder as she thought. "It would all depend on why…" she shook her head. She was giving too much away, but Alex needed to hear something, to be assured her brother was all right. "I don't know why he was so upset. He didn't volunteer any information and I didn't push. Maybe I should have?"

"No, Jake will talk when he's ready to."

"That's been my experience in the past, as well." Rachel needed to talk and Alex needed to hear what she had to say. It wasn't as if she was breaking any confidentiality rules. "So far we've solved all of our cases, but sometimes they can have a tragic beginning or ending. Over the last eighteen months we've developed...kind of…a routine." She was looking into the past and totally focused. "Usually one or both of us has been without sleep for at least twenty-four hours. There's been a time or two when I've been icing an arm or an eye or some part of my body. It kind of goes with the job," she laughed softly. "Anyway, we'd sit together on a couch in some nameless hotel room, often unsure of what city we were in, and simply let all the noises that were echoing in our ears fade into the background, until we could hear the sound of our breathing." Was that what had happened the night before, had they simply been searching for the sound of the other's breathing? She gave herself a slight shake and blinked. "Sometimes we talk, but usually not, unless there was something specific that worried one of us.

"That's about what I did on the phone, kept him company, the only way I could, since he's on one coast and I'm on another." Rachel realized that was exactly when they'd done, both last night and the night he'd told her about Pirate Jake. She'd needed him the first time and he'd been there for her, just as she'd been there for him last night. It was like a punch in the stomach to understand that neither night had anything to do with their jobs.

"Okay." Alex smiled tenderly and thought, '_Oh, yeah friends and a lot more.' _ She could only shake her head at the two of them. They had the world's strangest relationship; she hoped it would have a happy ending. Jake deserved some happy and she had a feeling that Rachel did too. "I need to get some more work done…will you be all right?"

"Sure, and I've got Owen covered so you don't have to worry. The Martins aren't bringing him back until mid-afternoon. I'll get physical therapy out of the way long before he's due back. I'll take my cell with me just incase. Are you still planning on going to New York tonight?"

"Oh Lordy, I'd forgotten all about that. I've got to go. It's business with the gallery. The final contract needs to be signed and they're insistent I be in on the meetings about publicity." She grimaced at the thought. "I need to work glass like I need to breathe, but to make it pay the bills, I have to put up with all the crap that goes with it." She was determined to make her art cover all her expense. She'd been willing to accept Jacob's financial help for Owen's sake and in a small way her brother's too. Family was important to him and he'd really wanted to help. He had the disposable income. Two of his discoveries had paid off handsomely and a third one was hitting the market in the fall. She knew that if he chose, he could live comfortably on his share of the income from his patents for the rest of his life. But it was important to her to be self-supporting and now it was finally almost within her grasp.

"Are you sure you'll be all right alone with Owen for two days?" Alex thought quickly to be sure she had all her bases covered. "I've got Melissa Sanderling for tomorrow evening. She's nineteen and reliable, so you can go to your FBI dinner and not worry about a thing."

"Gee, thanks." Rachel had been hoping that she'd be able to use Owen as an excuse for not attending, unfortunately Alex had gotten a sitter and outmaneuvered her. "You don't have to worry, we'll be fine. He'll be in school during the day so I'll be able to get to PT. I promise to only drive your SUV for that and if there is an emergency."

"I'm not concerned about my car, cause I've got yours." She grinned wickedly, knowing how much the agent loved her vintage Sunbeam. She'd been surprised Rachel was willing to let her leave it in airport parking.

"Yeah and I don't even want to know who drove it out here. Felix is too damn big to fit and Ja--Hood's driving skills leave a lot to be desired. Just the thought of him driving a stick shift gives me...ah...the chills," she whispered, fighting an odd memory of bouncing along on the highway as Jacob shifted the gears of an old speeding truck.

Alex rolled her eyes at Rachel's comment about her brother's abilities. It was a running argument between them and she suspected they enjoyed it tremendously. She also believed it was partly due to the agent's need to feel in control, more than anything Jake had done, though it was never a good idea for him to be behind the wheel when his mind was on something else.

* * *

Late that afternoon a huge storm swept in. It delayed Alex's plane enough so she was able to catch it, since she'd spent extra time in her studio and was running late.

* * *

"Rachel, can we watch this?" Owen held up the DVD _Time Machine_. It was the original, from the early sixties. "Ya can't have popcorn and no movie." He grinned at her as she entered the family room carrying a full bowl and two cans of soda.

"It's almost eight-thirty, and you've got school tomorrow. We can only watch for an hour." She warned as he turned on the TV and loaded the DVD player.

They settled on the couch as the opening credits rolled and rain beat against the windows. In the distance and moving closer, lightening lit up the sky, followed by cracks of thunder. The last few days had been unseasonably hot, but it had become damp and the temperature dropped as the weather changed. Jacob's nephew was ready for bed. Rachel was wearing borrowed jeans, a tank top, and a black Stanford hoodie around her shoulders.

"I like storms," Owen reached into the bowl of popcorn they were sharing. He was fighting sleep, but refused to admit it. He and Tommy Martin had told ghost stories most of the night, instead of sleeping on their camping trip.

"Yeah, me too, especially the lightening, though I'm not so crazy about thunder anymore." Rachel couldn't tell him it sounded too much like her memories of New York City on Tuesday morning September 11, 2001.

"Uncle Jacob says it's the sonic shock wave caused by lightening." He talked as he chewed more popcorn. "He explained it to me a long time ago so I wouldn't be scared. He said ya can't have one without the other."

"I guess you can't." But she sure wished you could. "Will you be all right upstairs alone? I can make up the couch for you."

"Naw, we get storms like this all the time," as he talked, he didn't take his eyes off the TV. "Oh watch, this is a good part. The door opens and there..." He grinned as he watched the movie. "That guy, the scientist, George, reminds me of my uncle. He's so smart."

Rachel didn't see the comparison. "If George is so smart, how come he's all bloody and bruised like that?"

"Cause his pretty blonde lady isn't an FBI agent," Owen stated innocently. "She's an Eloi and kinda needs to be saved a lot. He even has ta fight the Morlocks ta get her back. You wait and see. The rest of the movie tells ya how he got so busted up." The child blinked sleepily at what was happening on the large flat screen, completely oblivious to the shock he'd given the woman beside him.

Before George, the scientist, saved his blonde lady's life the first time, Owen was asleep, curled up with his head on Rachel's left thigh. She was engrossed in the movie, running her fingers through the little boy's straight brown hair over-and-over-again, hardly aware of what she was doing. She had to agree with him, there were times the guy in the movie reminded her of Jake. He didn't look like him, but he was good and kind with high ideals.

"Rachel, I didn't know you liked science fiction," Hood's words were deep and smoky coming from somewhere behind her.

"Why do you think I hang out with you?" She laughed as she turned slowly, expecting to discover her mind was playing tricks on her and she'd only imagined hearing him. She'd been caught up in the movie, but couldn't believe anyone had gotten into the house without her knowing it.

"I've often wondered about that." He walked out of the shadows of the darkened hallway and into the ring of light surrounding the sofa where she and Owen were. "It's good to finally have the answer."

"Shhhh," she held her right index finger to her lips and pointed to the cushion beside her with her left. Seconds later she muted the TV, plunging the room into silence. He was here, really here. She hadn't imagining it.

"Ahhh I see," he mouthed as he took off his wet coat and smiled at the sight of his nephew sleeping, tucked against Rachel's side. "Is he hurting you?"

"No, he doesn't weigh much and he's on my left side." She knew if she was smart, she'd look away, but she was caught by deep hazel eyes that she'd missed.

"I'll take him upstairs. You'll both be more comfortable." Jacob slipped the strap to his carryon over his shoulder. He was standing almost directly behind Rachel when he leaned over the back of the couch. His shoulder bumped hers and the back of his hand skimmed her jean-clad thigh as he picked up the child.

Rachel's chin tipped upward as she was surrounded by his scent and hit by the strong memory of sleeping on airplanes with her head resting against the wool of his jacket. "I've missed you," the words simply tumbled out, low and husky.

"I've missed you too." Hazel eyes turned dusky green.

"Uncle Jake," Owen murmured, breaking the spell that had frozen the two adults inches apart.

"Yeah, kiddo, it's me. I'm taking you to bed." He straightened and tucked his nephew's head under his chin.

"But I was watching the movie with Rachel," he protested.

"She's not going anywhere." His gaze was still locked with hers as he made her a silent promise: she'd have a fight on her hands, if she took him up on his old offer to be reassigned. "Be right back," he whispered before turning and heading toward the hall.

Rachel wasn't sure how long Jacob was gone. She stared at the silent television not seeing a thing. He'd caught her by surprise making her feel exposed and vulnerable. _Had she really told him she missed him? Did she imagine that he'd said he missed her too?_

It could have been minutes or hours later when Hood asked from the doorway, "Are you still off the narcotics?"

"Yes, nothing but ibuprofen since before I left the hospital." She looked straight ahead as if she were watching the soundless TV.

"Good, then we can watch the movie with adult beverages." He sat down beside her and handed her a delicate balloon shaped crystal snifter of cognac while keeping the matching Old Fashioned glass, half filled with scotch, for himself. Taking the remote from her hand, he turned the sound back on and put his feet up on the coffee table next to hers.

"You want to watch this?" She finally looked at him. He'd changed into dry jeans and a t-shirt.

"Sure it's one of my favorite movies." He smiled slowly, fully expecting her to argue with him. "Actually, I think it _is_ my movie. I moved most of my things here when I rented out my house in Atherton."

Rachel knew his books were here, she'd seen them in the study. They weren't simply books that he'd read. There were textbooks that contained chapters he'd written and a collection of old first editions. The item she found most intriguing was a slim volume that was of his Nobel candidate paper on dark matter. Seeing those things had made her finally understand what his life had been like before the FBI and she'd wondered if he wasn't bored silly nowadays. There had also been a copy of Margaret M. Cain's dissertation, dedicated to her husband, Dr. Jacob Hood. Rachel had scanned it a number of times, though didn't have the mathematical background to understand much of it. She'd walked away each time, more convinced than ever that Jacob's wife had been brilliant. They definitely had been well matched.

"Lost interest in the movie?" Hood's voice broke into her thoughts.

"No...ah...just thinking, now shush, so I can hear what they're saying." She glanced at him sideways, gently rolling the snifter between her palms to warm her cognac. He seemed to be concentrating on the action on the screen. How had he known that she hadn't been?

When the movie was over and Jacob had watched the ending twice, Rachel turned to him and asked, "Do you think he made it back to the world...er...time of the Eloi, or did he go somewhere ...some when else in that time machine of his?"

"Of course he went back or I guess it would be more correct to say he went ahead," he chuckled softly. "He had a world to set right and a woman to help him do it."

"Yes, I guess he did." She slowly sipped the rich amber liquid in her glass, trying to ignore Owen's words from earlier, _'That guy, the scientist, George, reminds me of Uncle Jacob.'_ He was looking at her oddly and Rachel wanted to keep his mind on the movie and not on questions she didn't want to be asked. "I wonder...ah…what were the three books he took with him?"

"I've always found that to be an intriguing thought, three books on which to build a new world." He shrugged and turned off the DVD player and TV before tossing the remote onto the cushion on his far side. The movie had been an interesting diversion, and served its purpose: he'd been able to study her unnoticed. She wasn't doing as well as he had hoped and he wasn't going to let her get him sidetracked talking philosophy.

"So how have you really been doing?" Hood nudged her gently with his shoulder and ran the toes of his sock covered right foot along the instep of her bare left one. "It's apparent you're not sleeping well."

"No-no-no-no," she shook her head and turned toward him. "After last night's phone call, that's my question to ask you."

"I am sorry about that. I shouldn't have bothered you so late." He took a drink of scotch and stared into the dark liquid. "Especially if I was going to fall asleep in the middle of your story."

"That's okay. It wasn't much of a story." She smiled gently, not willing to admit that she'd fallen asleep too. "You sounded like you'd had a terrible day."

"I did." He'd had a marathon therapy session that had left him reeling. "I...ah...did something..." He sighed and straightened until his feet were on the floor with his elbows resting on his knees. "It's something I've been fighting for a long time. I...ah...saw a therapist," he whispered, refusing to look anywhere but into the contents of his glass. "It was like taking a guided tour through hell." Hood had spent most of his flight from the West coast trying to put his life into some sort of prospective, after his session the day before. He'd never before been so glad for extended travel time due to inclement weather. It had given him more time to try to put his emotions back into the box where he'd hidden them for years.

"Do you want to talk about it?"

"Not right now. I can't...but soon." He smiled at her gratefully. "I'm all talked out. My session with Anna lasted almost six hours."

"You saw Professor Yang professionally?"

"Ummhumm." He nodded. "It's one of the hardest things I've ever done."

"It had to have been all the more difficult since you're...ah….you know, involved with her." She tried to sound sympathetic, but didn't think she was successful.

"Involved with her?" Jacob frowned. "She was a close friend of my wife's and she was kind enough to take Tanner when I moved to DC, but…" He was missing something, he could tell by the look on Rachel's face.

"I thought...I mean...months ago you stopped screening her calls…then went to her house for dinner...you...you were seeing her," the words came out in a low rush. She'd never said a thing about that night when she'd felt like nothing more than a ghost watching him live his life, while she stood between him and any danger that might lurk in the bushes. It had made her feel like a voyeur and she hadn't liked it.

"You thought I've been dating her?" His brows rose in amazement. "That yesterday was a romantic...whatever?" He chuckled softly at the irony.

"Your text said you were going to see her." Rachel scrambled to keep from feeling foolish. "What else was I supposed to think? I was the agent on duty the last two times you were in Palo Alto. I've seen the way she looks at you."

"Oh, and how is that exactly?" He turned toward her, fighting a grin.

"You know exactly what I'm talking about, Hood." She glared and curled her left leg beneath her while keeping her right heel supported by the coffee table. Rachel couldn't rid her mind of the scene that had played out in the shadows from Anna Yang's front porch. "Besides," she sniffed indignantly. "You don't seem like the kinda guy who'd causally kiss someone." She felt a flush creeping along her cheeks but refused to give into it. He'd given every impression of a man who cared about a woman. "What other conclusion should I have drawn?"

"You seem to have given this a great deal of thought." His voice crackled with pleasure, causing Rachel to blush to her hairline.

"You're enjoying this way too much."

"Oh, that I am, Agent Young. But to set the record straight, Anna Yang and I are just friends and I didn't kiss her, she kissed me."

"I wasn't trying to invade your privacy." Rachel backpedaled. It felt like the ground was falling out from under her. "I was watching the house and there was movement at the door. As soon as I realized---"

"Shhhh," he leaned very close, covering her lips with two fingers. "It's all right. I know you were doing your job. You're very careful of my personal boundaries. I, on the other hand…" his brow twitched and one corner of his mouth twisted upward, "May not always have been as scrupulous about yours."

"But--"

"I'm not done." He cut her off again by adding a bit more pressure with his fingers. "There's one other tiny item you need to understand." He was strangely distracted by her full pale lips. "When I kiss a woman, I'm far more thorough and discreet."

"I'll...ah...remember that for the next time you...ah...well...are entertaining someone." As she spoke her mouth moved against his fingers and it created a bubble of pressure deep in her stomach.

"You do that." He pulled back to give her some space as he ran his thumb over dark smudges under her eyes. She hadn't been sleeping and the slight tan she acquired in the last few weeks, couldn't hide it.

"Please don't ask." She saw the question in his eyes and reached for his wrist to pull his hand away from her face.

"Rachel…"

"Nightmares, okay, are you satisfied." She hated the way the bad dreams were stealing her strength and making weak and useless, as weak and useless as she was in her dreams. "I can't talk about them now...not yet." She couldn't meet his eyes. He was too perceptive and would see the fear and doubts that haunted her.

"Fair enough--" Before he could say more, a huge bolt of lightening lit up the night sky, followed by thunder like an explosion that shook the windows. The lights flickered once and went out, plunging them into inky darkness.


	8. Acceptance Interlude

**Disclaimer: **See Chapter 1

**Rating: **R** - **note rating bump

**Credits: **Many thanks to Joyce who helped me find my when I was lost in a story that had taken on a mind of its own. If not for her, this wouldn't be getting posted yet.

**Notes:** Acceptance is getting split into three chapters. This one is shorter than I usually write, but I think you will enjoy it. About a page in Jacob decided to change the direction the story was taking and as much as I fought him for control, he won out. It took me weeks to write it the way he wanted it written. You can blame Hood for the length between posts. He wouldn't listen to me no matter how much I tried to reason with him.

* * *

**Ch – 8 – Acceptance - Interlude**

By _Lattelady_

…

_When he felt himself caught up, he called out to me: "Come here so I can hold you," then made one bundle of himself and me._ - From The Divine Comedy Of Dante Alighieri – Inferno – Canto XXXI

* * *

It had been almost two hours since they'd lost power and it didn't appear that it was going to be restored anytime soon. Jacob Hood sat alone in the darkened family room listening to the storm's fury as it pounded around them. He knew all the old house's normal sounds in every season and weather condition, even when they were muted by rain, wind and thunder but he still couldn't sleep. Something was bothering him and he didn't know what it was, so he did one more walk-around. He had a flashlight in one hand and a recently freshened scotch in the other.

Owen was sleeping soundly and didn't appear to have moved since he'd carried his nephew to bed. As Hood went from room to room, he double-checked to be sure all electronics were unplugged. He ran the beam of his flashlight above crown molding and around windows. The new roof and gutters he and Alex had had put on after last year's unexpected spring hailstorm had been a good investment. Not even the southeast corner of the third-floor sitting room ceiling leaked. It had been a problem, when the wind blew just right, for as long as he could remember.

Jacob looked out the small window on his way down the back stairs. It gave him a good view of his sister's studio and the light he'd left burning over the small building's door. It was the one bright spot in the blackness for as far as he could see and indicated Alex's back-up generator was still functioning. Any of her work that was in the drying furnace was safe from temperature fluctuation. He'd gotten soaked checking the workshop not long after he'd helped Rachel to bed. He'd left the light on to save any further trips out into the storm.

Rachel...his lips turned up at the edges as he thought of her. _Was she the reason he was anxious?_ It wasn't as if she was in danger, she'd been safe for weeks but... something… just… didn't… feel… right. He rationalized it, as habit from when she'd been shot and kidnapped but that didn't help. He was worried and it wasn't going away until he was sure she was safe. The strange yearnings in his stomach didn't make sense, but feelings seldom did. It was one of the reasons he preferred logic and reason to emotions. Hood finished his drink in one burning gulp and continued on down the stairs, leaving his empty glass on a kitchen counter as he headed toward the downstairs bedroom.

He stood for a moment with his hand resting on her closed door. It was strange to have it separating them. His fingers twitched with the urge to open it so he could check on her.

Distant thunder rumbled, shaking the windows and it was followed by a low moan that quickly became a panicked scream. "Nooooo! Hood, look out! Run!"

Jacob never gave it a second thought. He pulled the door open and raced into the room.

Rachel was sitting in the middle of her bed. Her left leg curled beneath her and the injured one tangled in the bedding. Her fingers clutched the sheet and dug into the mattress. It wasn't until he was sitting inches away from her that he realized her eyes were closed.

"Rachel, wake-up," he rasped, shaking her gently by the shoulders. "You're having a nightmare. You're safe, but you need to wake-up."

"Hood?" his name dropped from her lips as her head came up. She blinked and her eyes filled with confusion. "I couldn't get to you." She gripped the front of his undershirt, pulling him closer, trying to explain. "I was too late...too far away. I called and called but you couldn't hear me." She shuddered at the memory. "...Then the South Tower fell…and you were trapped," her voice was harsh, like shards of broken glass.

"Rachel, look at me," he demanded. "I'm right here and so are you. We're both safe."

"You don't understand," she whispered and grazed his jaw with the tips of her fingers, trying to convince herself he was really there. "I tried to get to you, but I wasn't fast enough."

"I'm fine, both of us are." He wrapped his arms around her and ran one hand gently up and down her back. "You were having a bad dream."

"A dream?" her breath hitched and she shook her head to clear it, tying to focus, but fact and fiction wouldn't separate. "It was real." Too much of what she'd dreamt was dredged up from old memories and given sound effects by distant thunder as the storm moved over them. She was confused remembering how shock and disbelief had turned to horror on that New York morning, when she and Nicky had stood on the rooftop of their Greenwich Village building and watched as the World Trade Center was reduced to rubble.

"Rachel," he demanded. "Look me in the eyes and listen to _me_, not the storm."

"Hood?" She nodded sounding like she was trying to convince herself of something she didn't really believe.

"Yeah." He smiled. "It's me."

"You're safe?" Rachel ran her hands over his shoulders and up his neck needing to feel him warm and real. "I was only dreaming?"

"Yeah, now you've got it."

"I thought..." she shook her head refusing to think about that dark time in her life. Bit by bit she pulled back into herself, carefully closing down into the cool efficient agent she'd become. It was a physical and emotional trick she'd practiced until she could pull it off at a moment's notice no matter what the situation.

"No, ya don't." He kept a light hold on her shoulders refusing to let her disappear behind the pretense of Agent Young. "Stay with me. You stay right here with me."

"I am. I'm here, Jak-Hood. Sorry for...ah...disturbing you." She looked away, unable to meet his eyes. "Please," she whispered. She could see he was dressed for bed. She must have woken him. "Let me go. You shouldn't see me like this." She knew that no matter how well versed she was at controlling her facade, she couldn't sustain it, not here, not now, with this man when she needed it most.

"Why not?" He ran his hand along her damp cheek and into her hair.

"It's unprofessional." She put cool detachment into her words but it was hard when she knew she was only three weeks out from almost dying and that due to her physical injury, her career path consisted of a huge question mark.

"What are you talking about?"

"You need to trust me again to keep you safe. That's never going to happen if you keep seeing me fall apart?" She shrugged and tried to smile, but it fell sadly short of her usual saucy grin. "It's best if you go back to your room."

"Stop it!" His words shook. "Stop it. I trust you and always have. What's happening right now has nothing to do with your job."

"But..."

"No, don't argue." He looked down at her determined to win this battle. "You're not on duty. You're someone recovering from being shot and almost bleeding to death. Feel free to fall apart anytime you need to."

"I can't. I have to be the strong one. It's who I am." At least this was familiar territory, Rachel thought. She was being the practical one while he was talking theory.

"It's only _part_ of who you are." He spoke gently.

"No, no it isn't," she refused to accept that she'd changed that much. "It can't be. That's unacceptable."

"Hush, you're allowed to have moments when you're confused and unsure. You're even allowed to be afraid." He tipped her chin upward and leaned closer.

"No…" her denial come out breathy instead of firm as she'd meant. "Fear is weakness." Rachel knew she was quoting her father and resented that emotional triggers she believed she'd disarmed years ago, still had the power to hurt her.

"That's crap and you know it. Fear like pain is a warning sign and nothing more. You need to deal with their causes and do so in an intelligent way. If you keep everything bottled up inside, you'll break when you finally let it out." This was a subject Jacob Hood was eminently qualified to talk about. He'd spent most of the day Saturday with a psychiatrist chopping through his emotional walls. He still couldn't put a name to everything he'd found on the other side, the feelings were too unfamiliar but he knew for sure that the woman sitting inches away was important to him in ways he had never imagined.

"You don't understand..." She had a hazy dream of a hospital bed, terrible pain and Jacob holding her as she cried. Had it really happened? Had he already seen her shattered and falling to pieces?

"Come here so I can hold you," his lips moved against her ear and he wrapped his arms around her stiff body.

"I can't," Rachel denied one more time, before all the fight went out of her. She gave up and slumped against him. Her head resting on his shoulder with her face buried against his neck, telling herself that it was all right, just this once.

"Hold on and don't let go." Hood instructed as he shifted until they were lying down. He was on his back with her body sprawled haphazardly across his. He felt her tense as he pulled the covers over them and heard her gasp when he gently pulled her right leg up and across his abdomen making it easy to massage her injured muscles. "Am I hurting you?" he murmured. His hand stilled but never left her thigh.

"No," her voice was hoarse and deep, as strange sensations rolled through her belly, making her want to touch him in return. "No...that feels...nice," she sighed and shyly let her hand drift from his shoulder until it rested on his chest.

"Then relax. You're safe."

"Jacob, this isn't smart." Her fingers dug into t-shirt material to keep from caressing him.

"Screw smart," he snapped, holding her tighter, every muscle in his body straining to bring her closer. This was what he needed. She was what he needed. He'd denied and hidden it for so long that the knowledge caught him by surprise as passion roared to life, making it hard to breathe. He'd always known she was beautiful and over the months he'd come to realize that he found her desirable, but this was so far above all that, it shook him to the core.

"Jake," Rachel whispered. God she wanted him but even as the thought made her moan she fought it. What was she doing? She wasn't his dead wife and never could be. "Stop…" she choked on the word but had to continue. She'd spent too much of her life playing second best to a boy child who'd died before he was born. She was done doing battle with ghosts. "I can't be who you want me to be."

"You're exactly who I want you to be," his voice was smoky and smooth and poured over her like warm cognac, making her shiver but she refused to relax against him. That way led to disaster and more pain than Rachel thought she could deal with.

"Jak-Hood?"

"Shhhh it's all right," he sighed and ran his hand through her hair until it stopped on her damp cheek. He realized she was in no condition to change the fundamentals of their relationship and wasn't sure he was ready for it either. Over the last six months he'd noticed that they'd often exchanged heated glances but that didn't mean he was who she wanted. "I'd never do anything to hurt you but I'm staying here in case you need me."

"I don't want to need you or anybody." Her eyes glistened with tears and she hoped he couldn't see them in the dark.

"Well, tough, you're only human and going to have to live with that fact. You think I want to need you and your damn gun when we're in the field?" One by one Hood forced his muscles to relax. He wanted Rachel Young and cared about her more than he realized was possible but she was still wounded and vulnerable. He wouldn't push his advantage.

"It's called a weapon, Hood," Rachel growled, relieved to be on familiar territory.

"A rose by any other name…" He quoted causing them both to chuckle.

"Exactly how much of that scotch did you have to drink?" She grinned at him warm and beginning to relax for the first time since he arrived hours earlier. "You're quoting Shakespeare after crawling into my bed..." her words died as she became aware of the hard length of him pressed against her abdomen.

"Actually...it's my bed." The world was suddenly very small and only contained the two of them.

"Oh," she sighed. "I don't understand…" She should have realized that his clothes hanging in the closet weren't simply stored there, but were waiting for their owner to return and wear them. It made her wish she'd been a bit nosier and looked beyond the one drawer in the dresser that had been empty for her use. "You shouldn't have given up your room for me."

"Why not? You needed a place without stairs for a while and I had one. It's not like I'm here all the time, even when I am in DC." He shrugged. It had given him pleasure to picture her sleeping safe in his bed, when he'd been thousands of miles away.

It was a room she'd been comfortable in from the start. She liked the light blue walls that highlighted clean white crown molding. She'd spent hours reading in the large overstuffed rocking chair by the window. One of its well-padded arms had been the perfect resting place for the knee of her injured leg. "I don't like to put you out."

"As you can see, you haven't." He held her closer and grinned wickedly, wiggling his brows at her, making her giggle.

"Stop that." She playfully hit his shoulder. "I'm trying to be serious."

"So am I." His expression sobered. He could hear his heart pounding in his ears from her nearness. "It's no big deal really. This was our grandparents' house. Owen has the bedroom that was mine when we would visit as kids. As an adult, it makes sense for me to be down here. I don't have to worry about waking Alex on my nocturnal wanderings. She's a light sleeper unless she's exhausted from a marathon session with her glass art." All his life he'd required less sleep than others and he'd learned to make certain concessions, but this room on the main floor of the old house he loved so much wasn't one of them.

"That's what tonight is, a nocturnal wandering?" She had to know exactly where on the list of things important to Jacob Hood her name fell.

"Hardly," he rasped and then caught his breath as he felt her nails raking seductively down his shirt toward the ties of his sleep pants.

"Rachel, no," he gasped and wrapped his fingers around her wrist before it was too late. He turned onto his side so he was facing her and moved his right leg to pin her left one to the mattress. He needed to feel her pressed intimately against him despite his refusal to take things any further.

"Then why are you here like this?" she cried out in frustration and hurt.

"Because I couldn't stay away." His answer tumbled out in true, honest, Jacob form.

"You're not making any sense." Desire gnawed at her. All she wanted to do was melt against him, skin to skin, to feel surrounded by him as he pressed her to the mattress and moved deep within her. He had the fire and passion she needed to burn away her sorrow and pain.

"Rachel, we have too much history and this had been building for too long to be a one night thing." He cupped her cheek and pressed his forehead against hers. "Chemistry has a way of fogging the clearest mind and confusing the issues. Once before I erred by mistaking a friendship with benefits for something much deeper than it was. The results were...difficult. I'm never going to do it again."

"Yeah...I know what you mean," she laughed bitterly, wondering who the woman had been in his life. Hours earlier he'd insisted that Anna Yang was simply a casual friend but Rachel couldn't help wondering if there wasn't more to it than that. "I've been there and done that, too. I know the issues that kind of relationship creates. It doesn't take long for the benefits to become more of a problem than they're worth. By that time there isn't much left of the friendship." She'd made a pass at Hood and he'd rejected her in the kindest possible way, but it was still a rejection. She didn't know whether to be heartbroken or relieved.

"Are you talking about Mr. Shoes?" Hood guessed as he remembered Rachel answering her door wearing only a man's partially buttoned shirt at 7 am on a Sunday morning.

"Who?"

"The guy who was with you that time I interrupted your free weekend. I'd read a news article about a boy who'd been miraculously cured of cancer. Mr. Shoes was the guy in your shower. Was he a...ah… your friend with ah...benefits?"

"Yeah, how'd you know?" She tried to pull out of his arms, but he wasn't letting her go.

"You left him too casually for him to have meant anything to you, but you trusted him enough to leave while he was still in your apartment." Jacob rolled onto his back, pulling her along with him until her right leg was resting across his middle again.

"Good detective work Dr. Hood." She smirked.

"Thank you, Agent Young." He kept one hand planted firmly on her back and the other on her shoulder. If he didn't, he was sure he would end up cupping her bottom and pressing her tightly against him. "I don't like him," he growled.

"Who?"

"Mr. Shoes," he spat the words out in disgust and mentally tossed _that guy_ into a pile with any of the other DC Suit types who had drifted fleetingly through her life.

"You don't know him." She tried to reason with him.

"He was in your bed..."

"So are you...and all the word games in the world won't change that." She nodded for emphasis. "This is Alex's house and she gave me this room to use while I'm here. That makes it---"

"….he--was--in--you," Jacob ground out refusing to listen to her rant any longer. Something low and almost violent shivered along his nerve endings making him pull her tighter against him.

"You sound almost jealous," she accused.

"I am!" The word exploded into the room hitting them both hard in the heart.

Rachel felt as if someone has sucked all the oxygen out of the room. "But you said no. You turned me down when I…" Her hand began to sneak carefully down the front of his shirt, again, only to be caught tightly in his grasp.

"Do you think that was easy, that any of this is easy?" He glared. It took all his strength not to slip his hands beneath her sleep clothes and explore her soft skin and hidden places.

"Jake…" her breath caught in her throat as she felt him move against her.

"Damn it, Rachel, shut up," he groaned and buried his nose into her hair. The scent of almonds washed over him as he fought for restraint. It took time but his heart rate returned to normal and he finally let his muscles relax, confident that his mind was back in control.

"I'm sorry," Jacob muttered and brushed his lips against her forehead. "I didn't mean for that to happen. I want..." Suddenly he realized he didn't know exactly what he wanted. He was a scientist who prided himself on logic, always having a plan, a way to move confidently from point A to point B. Here he was in one of the most important situations of his life and he had no idea where it was leading.

"I don't understand. You're the one who said screw smart...we could just..." She tried to pull her hand free to touch him everywhere. Her needs drowned out the small voice inside of her whispering that she wasn't being fair to him. He'd lost his wife and was still dealing with his grief. "It wouldn't have to mean anything," she rationalized.

"You're wrong. It would mean something and the way things are now, I don't think it would be good...at least not after the next few hours. They would be very very good," he assured her huskily and gently caressed her brow into her hairline. "But that's the problem, Rachel. It's why, as much as I desire you..." He shrugged and shook his head. "Not now, not like this when you're still injured and unsure of what or why you're doing things. And I'm not much better off." He wished he could see clearer; know what to do to make her feel better. He wasn't a man who was good at expressing his feelings and was sure there was something missing that he should say, but couldn't figure out what it was.

"That's just crazy…"

He could feel her breath on his face. "In my opinion, you've spent too much time with men who are only after one thing."

"No, I...I've chosen men who don't complicate my life," she defended and tried to ignore the dull ache that appeared wherever his body met hers. It made her want things he wasn't willing to give her even if it was only for one night.

"You mean men who are undemanding and boring. Rachel, you don't seem to me to be the kind of woman who would find that enjoyable." He challenged.

"Pa-lease, don't give me that." How dare he question her taste in men when she spent all her time keeping his ass out of the line of fire? "As if I need anymore complications, since you came into my life."

"Exactly," he grinned and strummed his fingers slowly across her lips. One thing was certain, he wanted to make her life as complicated as he could. It was the whys and wherefores of the outcome that he couldn't see clearly.

"Jacob, you can't mean..." she whispered. Her eyes met his inches away. Common sense vanished as they'd brushed very near a line that once crossed, there would be no returning. A simple romp in bed to relieve tension would be hard enough to overcome, but it appeared that he wanted far more from her than that.

"I don't know what I mean, except that I want to give us a chance to find out." He watched her expression change as his words sunk in. "I do know that you are important to me in ways I've yet to discover. I need...we need the time to find the answers. We both deserve that."

"This is too confusing." Her eyes fluttered closed and she rested against him, sure she would wake in the morning to find this had all been a strange dream, though there was no denying the reality of the deep desire she felt for him.

"I know." It was why he'd pulled back. He had the advantage of a very rough day spent letting Anna Yang take a jackhammer to the walls he'd carefully constructed around his psyche. It had made him face a number of painful truths, but he didn't have all the answers yet. That would take time and hours and hours spent with Rachel Young the woman, not the agent.

"I know it's a lot to ask, but will you...ah...ah...stay with me until I fall asleep? I'm not trying to be a tease or make you change your mind...I ah... like listening to you breathe." It was hard for her to admit that she wanted him on anything but a physical level.

"I was planning to stay all night." He frowned in the dark and again silently cursed the shadowy man or men from her past who had been so careless with her feelings. He couldn't imagine anyone being lucky enough to fall asleep beside her and then being foolish enough to leave her to wake alone.

"Wait, what about Owen? Alex would have a fit if she knew you were in here, even innocently, especially if there was any chance her son might find out."

"Alex would be thrilled if she knew I was in here but then she knows her son sleeps like the dead and she thinks you're good for me," he chuckled softly at her shocked expression.

"You two have been talking about me?"

"No, you needn't worry, she's kept your confidences," he was disgruntled that he hadn't been able to use his sister as a source to find out more about Rachel. All Alex had been willing to tell him was how the injured agent was doing physically.

"Oh, all right then." Rachel shifted until she was more comfortable. She wasn't used to sleeping with a man. Sex was one thing, but spending the night wasn't something she usually allowed. The few times it had happened, she'd been careful to stay on her side of the bed.

Hood reached across her and picked up her cell from the nightstand to check it. "Your alarm will go off before it's time to get Owen up for school. My nephew is not a morning person. Mind over mattress is always a battle for him and anyone who is trying to get him out of bed, no matter what time it is." He carefully placed the phone on the small table behind him, so it wouldn't wake her when it went off.

"This is nice," she whispered as she shifted against him trying to find a place to rest her leg so that her thigh or abdomen wasn't pressing against his obvious erection. "I'm just not sure it's such a good idea."

"It's not, if you keep moving around like that," he groaned and gritted his teeth until she finally settled down.

"Sorry...I…" She couldn't say it, she couldn't tell him how strange this all was. He made her feel completely safe just by being him. A man had never been willing to simply hold her, no strings attached...or was it that she'd never bothered to ask?

"Now close your eyes and go to sleep. I'm right here." His fingers dug carefully into her thigh while his other hand moved gently through her hair.

"Jake," she muttered letting relaxation flow over her at his touch. She didn't know where this was leading or even if it was wise to follow. She'd let the morning take care of those questions and the many more they were sure to create. For the moment she felt warm, safe and cared for. Feelings that were too precious to throw away just because it may be the smart, or the professional thing to do.

Jacob lay in the dark room and listened to Rachel's breathing even out and felt her body grow lax in his arms as the storm blew itself out to sea. When he was sure she was asleep, he gently kissed her brow and whispered her name.

Occasionally, during the night, her sleep would grow restless and she would moan or cry out. Hood discovered that simply talking to her and holding her a bit closer was all the reassurance she needed to keep her nightmares from returning.

* * *

He woke to a gray dawn and a ringing cell phone on his nightstand. Without checking to see who was calling, he simply answered it, more interested in not waking the woman sleeping in his arms than anything else.

**TBC**


End file.
